A micro-grid simulator tool (SGridSim) using Effective Node-to-Node Complex Impedance (EN2NCI) models

Abstract

This paper presents a micro-grid simulator tool useful for implementing and testing multi-agent controllers (SGridSim). As a common engineering practice it is important to have a tool that simplifies the modeling of the salient features of a desired system. In electric micro-grids, these salient features are the voltage and power distributions within the micro-grid. Current simplified electric power grid simulator tools such as PowerWorld, PowerSim, Gridlab, etc, model only the power distribution features of a desired micro-grid. Other power grid simulators such as Simulink, Modelica, etc, use detailed Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) modeling to accommodate the voltage distribution features. This paper presents a SGridSim micro-grid simulator tool that simplifies the modeling of both the voltage and power distribution features in a desired micro-grid. The SGridSim tool accomplishes this simplified modeling by using Effective Node-to-Node Complex Impedance (EN2NCI) models of components that typically make-up a micro-grid. The term EN2NCI models means that the impedance based components of a micro-grid are modeled as single impedances tied between their respective voltage nodes on the micro-grid. The benefit of the presented SGridSim tool are 1) simulation of a micro-grid is performed strictly in the complex-domain; 2) faster simulation of a micro-grid by avoiding ODE solving. An example micro-grid model was built using the SGridSim tool and tested to simulate both the voltage and power distribution features with a total absolute relative error of less than 6%. © 2013 IEEE.