Multi-Site Real-Time Co-Simulation Laboratory: Technical Challenges and Successful Stories

The so-called “energy transition” aims at shifting the primary energy sources used especially for electricity production from fossil fuels to Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in order to pursue environmental sustainability. The increased share of RES into the electricity grid makes the planning and operation more difficult tasks and a correct modeling and simulation of such an emerging system, along with the interactions with its components, become increasingly important and also more arduous to carry out. In this perspective, this paper presents a Multi-Site Real-Time Co-Simulation (MS-RTCS) Laboratory, which is able to pool together geographically-distributed laboratories (from local, to national to intercontinental scale) for performing synchronous tests, through Internet-based communication protocols, sharing local expertise, as well as local HW and SW resources, The paper, after a bit of story of this initiative, frames the design and implementation of such laboratories, introduces the EnSiEL National Energy Transition Real-Time Laboratory (ENET-RTLab) as the Italian proposal in this challenge.