Cloud-based DERMS Test Platform Using Real-time Power System Simulation

Effective software development of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) requires an adequate test environment to facilitate implementation and testing. As the power system with distributed energy resources (DER) is a complex physical system and access to real-world test environments is limited, it is of interest to use real-time simulation for DERMS development. This paper introduces a cloud-based DERMS test platform using an OPAL-RT simulator for hardware-in-the-loop testing. A phasor-domain model of a modified IEEE 34 node test feeder with DER is implemented within ePHASORsim and interfaced through a Modbus connection to an internet-of-things (IoT) solution of KMC Control. The DERMS by Enbala operates on the Amazon cloud and is interfaced to the IoT cloud over a proprietary API. This paper describes the test setup and provides results of a sanity test of the DERMS. In the sanity test, DERs are controlled to avoid reverse power flow at the substation during high DER generation periods. The real-time hardware-in-the-loop test results have verified the basic functionalities and operations of the cloud-based DERMS control platform.