Study of co-simulation methods applied in power systems (Part I): VPNET

With the application of intelligent electronic devices in modern power systems, information exchange becomes a major factor to accomplish complex protection and control algorithms. Thus communication impact should be considered during the design process prior to real application. However, no existing power system simulator has the ability to systematically analyze communication impact. Constructing a new simulation engine is potentially time consuming and expensive. Co-simulation therefore is considered as an alternative for its capability to reuse the models developed for each individual simulator and to permit exploitation of discipline specific simulators. In this paper, an innovative integrated simulation platform was proposed as enabler for modern power system simulation. The co-simulation platform, called VPNET, combined virtual test bed (VTB) and OPNET to investigate the communication impact in designing power systems. In this paper, an overview on the research and development of the co-simulation methods for power systems at home and abroad was given. The co-simulation framework VPNET, together with its features and key technologies, was also presented. Two application case studies, one in networked control system, the other in multi-agent-based protection systems onboard of a ship, were provided. The simulation results show good consistency with theoretical analysis.