On-line configuration of network emulator for intelligent energy system testbed applications

Intelligent energy networks (or Smart Grids) provide efficient solutions for a grid integrated with near-real-time communication technologies between various grid assets in power generation, transmission and distribution systems. The design of a communication network associated with intelligent power system involves detailed analysis of its communication requirements, a proposal of the appropriate protocol architecture, the choice of appropriate communication technologies for each case study, and a means to support heterogeneous communication technology management system. This paper discuses a mechanism for on-line configuration and monitoring of heterogeneous communication technologies implemented at smart energy system testbed of Aal-borg university. It proposes a model with three main components, a network emulator used to emulate the communication scenarios using KauNet, graphical user interface for visualizing, configuring and monitoring of the emulated scenarios and a network socket linking the graphic server and network emulation server on-line. Specifically, our focus area is to build a model that gives us ability to look at some of the challenges on implementing inter-operable and resilient Smart Grid networks and how the current state of the art communication technologies are employed for smart control of energy distribution grids.