Cloudhive: A Cloud-Based Framework for Smart Grid Co-Simulation, Data, and Communication

The integration of renewable energy has driven the need for smart grid frameworks that enable efficient co-simulation, data management, and secure communication. This paper introduces CloudHive, a cloud-native framework designed to address these challenges by unifying large-scale power-network co-simulation, real-time data communication, and big data analytics in a single modular architecture. Unlike existing co-simulation tools or data platforms that operate in isolation, CloudHive uniquely enables bidirectional interaction between simulation environments (e.g., OpenDSS for power systems, OMNeT++ for communication networks) and real-world smart grids, supported by message-oriented middleware (RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka) for low-latency data exchange and Kubernetes for dynamic scalability. We evaluate CloudHive's accuracy, scalability, and usability through three representative case studies. The results show that CloudHive achieves high accuracy, performs well in real-world scenarios, and scales efficiently with growing workloads in cloud environments.