Digital Twin Framework and its Application for Protection Functions Testing of Relays

A digital replica of a physical asset to replicate the product or a process which can use simulation and get updated from the real time data every second of the clock, and using this digital copy to perform product testing in order to save additional infrastructure costs, is what our concept of digital twin all about. This work focuses on creating a virtual mechanism to setup a typical relay module inside the Azure cloud environment in the form of a virtual machine. The application configuration is written and passed on to the soft IED in the cloud virtual machine with the help of a configuration and IED management tool. The protection functions are configured in such a manner that they can be tested in a cloud-based setup instead of performing the actual hardware testing which is a tiresome task in times like now. Furthermore, a device firmware update is passed on to the soft relay registered in IoT hub through a direct method which initiates a multistep process of downloading, applying and reporting back the status of the firmware update through device twin queries in realtime. This is one of the many use cases of digital twin framework.