DSSnet: A Smart Grid Modeling Platform Combining Electrical Power Distribution System Simulation and Software Defined Networking Emulation

The successful operations of modern power grids are highly dependent on a reliable and efficient underlying communication network. Researchers and utilities have started to explore the opportunities and challenges of applying the emerging software-defined networking (SDN) technology to enhance efficiency and resilience of the Smart Grid. This trend calls for a simulation-based platform that provides sufficient flexibility and controllability for evaluating network application designs, and facilitating the transitions from in-house research ideas to real productions. In this paper, we present DSSnet, a hybrid testing platform that combines a power distribution system simulator with an SDN emulator to support high fidelity analysis of communication network applications and their impacts on the power systems. Our contributions lay in the design of a virtual time system with the tight controllability on the execution of the emulation system, i.e., pausing and resuming any specified container processes in the perception of their own virtual clocks, with little overhead scaling to 500 emulated hosts with an average of 70 ms overhead; and also lay in the efficient synchronization of the two sub-systems based on the virtual time. We evaluate the system performance of DSSnet, and also demonstrate the usability through a case study by evaluating a load shifting algorithm.