The development of a smart grid and communication co-simulator

Facing the ever increasing demand of energy and the forthcoming shortage of energy resources, renewable energy generation becomes important in power generation. With the integration of various distributed energy resources, a smart grid is created. For the traditional power grid system, the control is usually based on a dedicated communication system. With the smart grid, all control and data may be exchanged through a public communication network. The unavoidable latency could cause desirable effects to the grid reliability and hence a software system for simulating these situations becomes essential. This paper presents some important considerations for developing a co-simulation software that incorporates a power system software simulator and a communication network simulator. The framework design of the co-simulator and preliminary results are given in this paper.