Challenges and necessity of systematic uncertainty quantification in smart grid co-simulation

The increasing installation of renewable energy generation requires the integration of new automation and communication components into a (smart) power grid. This, in turn, requires rigorous testing of these components and their interaction in order to guarantee safe, reliable energy supply. Co-simulation will become more and more important as means of testing since smart grids are multi-domain systems and as such too complex for one expert to model and analyze. However, simulation always carries uncertainty, which might defeat the purpose of testing safety-critical systems if not considered properly. The quantification of this uncertainty is of paramount importance for the design of reliable testing frameworks. Since this issue has not yet gained much attention in the smart grid simulation community, this paper presents an exemplary uncertainty quantification of a grid simulation to underline the acuteness of the issue. The groundwork of an uncertainty analysis framework for co-simulation is presented and further requirements of such a framework are discussed.