Real-Time High Performance Computing Platform for Smart Grid Applications

Real-time control of smart grid will require fast and accurate implementation of intelligent monitoring and decision making techniques. Intelligent methods with faster speed and better accuracy will be possible by implementing in parallel on high performance computing platforms. Such methods need to be rigorously tested in simulations before implementing in actual systems. Therefore, integration of simulation environments with high performance computing (HPC) platforms is necessary to develop and test real-time monitoring and control methods for smart grids. Such integration is a challenge because of hardware and software limitations of real-time digital simulator (RTDS), HPC platforms as well as physical inaccessibility of HPC systems. In this paper, an integrated platform consisting of RTDS, HPC and data acquisition system is developed for real-time streaming of simulation data for computation. A wide area monitoring system for a multi-machine power system is illustrated on such integrated platform.