Towards a Collaborative Simulation Platform for Renewable Energy Systems

To integrate wind and solar energy in electric systems, new technologies, such as energy storage and demand response, have been proposed to increase system flexibility. Control approaches and market rules are being developed accordingly to better manage these resources in multiple time scales. Therefore, models and software tools capable of performing hourly scheduling, intra-hour dispatch, and automatic generation control simulations are needed for testing these control approaches and for evaluating new market rules. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, we have developed an Electric System Intra-Hour Operation Simulator (ESIOS). Expanding this simulator as a service platform can benefit a larger community involved in exploring new models and controls and reducing the burden of maintaining a computing platform. Moreover the feedback and contribution from community users can help further improve the features of this simulation ecosystem. In this paper, we describe the function of this simulator. Based on our experience, we discuss the architecture design perspectives for transforming this simulator to an integrated collaborative service platform.