High fidelity cyber physical micro-grid systems

In order to attain appropriate coordination between utilities and end users while avoiding single points of failure which is typical of centralized controller architectures and dedicated communication links, advanced smart grids should incorporate distributed and autonomous controllers both at the utility side and at the user side in the form of a local micro grid. More distributed and autonomous controllers also reduce the risk for cyber security-related intentional and unintentional outages. However, there is an underlying paradox in the objective of achieving higher reliability through increased use of distributed and autonomous controllers: the more distributed and autonomous the control structure is, the more complex it also tends to be. Since more complex system may be more prone to operational failures, without a proper and careful planning and design, distributed and autonomous control architectures may yield worse reliability performance than expected. The present paper is focused on development of distributed and automated control within a hybrid local micro grid to improve its fault resilience and self-healing.