Developing Scalable, High-Fidelity Microgrid Models for Validating Resilient Controls

With increasing levels of penetration of renewable generation and distributed energy resources (DERs) across the bulk transmission and distribution systems, there is an increasing reliance on fast acting controls, protection, and communication to keep the grid operating reliably and securely. Under this context, it is extremely important to leverage high-fidelity cyber-physical testbed environments in order to study and understand the behaviors of distribution/microgrid systems and subsystems at scale over a wide-range of off-normal conditions. Specifically, it is essential to develop high-fidelity component and system models to simulate the various power electronics based DERs such as PV inverters, battery energy storage systems, and dynamic loads. Additionally, it is also critical that the testbed environment also includes the associated controls, protection, and communication elements appropriately so that the overall resilience of these distribution/microgrid systems can be accurately studied and quantified. To this end, this presentation will talk about PNNL’s powerNET testbed architecture, the associated model development efforts for a microgrid test system, the experimental use cases that we have considered, the cyber-physical datasets generated, as well as our approach to build scalable models for validating resilient controls for larger distribution systems/microgrids.