A Modular Simulation Environment for Education and Research in Smart Low-Voltage Grids

The increasing integration of renewable energies and electric vehicles poses new challenges for the operation and control of low-voltage distribution grids. This also increases the need for tools to simulate smart grids. To meet this need, a modular simulation environment that is tailored to these applications is presented. The system is based on open source technologies such as pandapower, InfluxDB, Grafana and allows users to configure and simulate realistic scenarios. It offers MQTT-based control and enables real-time visualization and data exchange. An example simulation is used to show how the transformer load can be influenced by decentralized generation and electric vehicle charging. The proposed system lowers the entry barriers for researching smart grid concepts and provides a practical platform for developing and testing control algorithms. In this paper, the design, implementation and evaluation of the system are discussed and a comparison with existing co-simulation frameworks is made.