OpenDSS and OpenDSS-PM open source libraries for NI LabVIEW

The EPRI Open Source Distribution System Simulator, OpenDSS, has been widely used to perform planning studies and research, particularly in the area of Distributed Energy Resources (DER). After being released in 2008 as open source software it has become widely used around the world. One of the features that makes OpenDSS popular is that the package offers interfaces for co-simulation. Initially, the program was released with a COM interface and, recently, the “Direct DLL” interface has been released so that users can access the program features on platforms incompatible with COM. With these interfaces, users can integrate their customized models into OpenDSS, control the simulation and to integrate OpenDSS into their own software. OpenDSS has continued to evolve and now offers a version to perform parallel computing in modern multi-core computers. This version is called OpenDSS-PM (Parallel Machine) and is available to the public as well. To keep expanding the integration capabilities of OpenDSS, this paper presents the graphical OpenDSS and OpenDSS-PM libraries for NI LabVIEW. These libraries are open source and can be installed in LabVIEW online using the VI package Manager.