Real Time Modeling, Co-Simulation and Cyber-Physical Analysis for DC Microgrid Clusters

A detailed and real-time implementation of the cyber and physical layer of the DC microgrid (MG) clusters are presented in this work. The physical layer is implemented using a real time digital simulator (RTDS) and the communication layer is implemented in Mininet. The objective of the work is to study the interaction of the communication, power electronics devices and other microgrid components to analyze effect of cyber adversaries and intrusions on the control mechanisms. Especially, the accurate modeling of the communication networks is a challenging task and has been attempted in this paper for the global control of interconnected DC MGs. Global control structures facilitate interconnection of neighboring MG clusters for better utilisation of distributed energy resources (DERS) and enable inter and intra power exchange in MGs. The global physical network is implemented in RTDS and Mininet is employed for understanding the cyber-physical systems (CPS) interactions. Real-time simulations are provided for the validation of the implemented system.