Implementation of wide area control in a real-time cyber-physical power system test bed

Developing a test environment for smart grid forms an indispensable stage to the realization of the next generation of the electricity grid. The coupling of the physical power system and its associated communication network makes modern power grid a typical cyber-physical system. In this paper, a real-time power system was simulated in RTDS and the communication network in NS-3. This test bed includes a wide area control scheme that employs the speed difference of generators in two areas of a simple 11-bus power system to dampen down local and inter-area oscillations. Different network conditions were tested and compared with cases that made use of only local input to dampen oscillations and another case that assumes a perfect communication network. The test bed showed that wide area control implementation with extremely unfavorable network conditions could introduce delays beyond the tolerable limit and lock the power system into a continually unstable mode, while favorable network conditions enhance damping of the local and inter-area oscillations of the power system.