Scalable open source smart grid simulator (SGSim)

Abstract

The future smart power grid will consist of an unlimited number of smart devices that communicate with control units to maintain the grid's sustainability, efficiency, and balancing. In order to build and verify such controllers over a large grid, a scalable simulation environment is needed. This paper presents an open source smart grid simulator (SGSim). The simulator is based on open source SystemC Network Simulation Library (SCNSL) and aims to model scalable smart grid applications. SGSim has been tested under different smart grid scenarios that contain hundreds of thousands of households and appliances. By using SGSim, different smart grid control strategies and protocols can be tested, validated and evaluated in a scalable environment.