Comparison of the Open Source Smart Grid Simulation Tools RAPSim and GridLAB-D

Renewable Alternative Powersystems Simulation

When you work on smart grid simulations with renewable energy, you most likely have heard about GridLAB-D which is an open source simulator allowing you to combine renewable energy sources with power flow problems in smart grid networks.
The other tool, RAPSim, comes with a similar goal, however was built based on a different design philosophie. While GridLAB-D comes with a textfile-based configuration of your simulation scenario and is run from command line, RAPSim comes with a graphical user interface allowing to generate your scenarios in a Sim City-like interface.
Midhat Jdeed has compared the two tools in his thesis by defining a number of very simple case studies which have been modeled in both tools.

Running GridLAB-D

In the end, he came to the following findings and conclusions: As expected, GridLAB-D comes with a large user base and a a comprehensive library of models. It was more surprising to find out that making a simple model were sometimes more difficult in GridLAB-D. For example, a household with constant load and a PV system could not be well described with the standard elements, because there is no household with a constant load. This makes sense from a realism point of view, but made it difficult to reproduce the same results in different simulators.
As a conclusion, both tools have their merits, be it for the researcher who wants to run simulations online on a simulation server or a teacher that wants to give some students a quick hands on experience with modeling a microgrid with a renewable energy source.

References
M. Jdeed. Comparison of the Smart Grid Simulation Tools RAPSim and GridLAB-D. Master Thesis, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, November 2016.

D. P. Chassin, J. C. Fuller, and N. Djilali. GridLAB-D: An Agent-Based Simulation Framework for Smart Grids. Journal of Applied Mathematics, vol. 2014, Article ID 492320, 12 pages, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/492320

M. Pöchacker and W. Elmenreich. Model implementation for the extendable open source power system simulator RAPSim. In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES'15), pages 103–108, Ancona, Italy, October 2015.

New Version of Renewables Alternativ Powersystems Simulation (RAPSim) Supports Your Own Model Implementations

We are proud to annouce a new release of our Renewables Alternativ Powersystems Simulation (RAPSim) software. The current version 0.92 is now available on the sourceforge page of RAPsim.

It has been some time since the RAPSim software had been presented at  the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Asia and also announced in this blog.

Renewable Alternative Powersystems Simulation

Since then we improved the graphical user interface to allow a smooth interactoin between user and simulation system and improved the software structure to allow for an easy extension of the simulator with your own models. At the 12th Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems we presented this feature in detail. The main steps are:

1. Select the correct abstract class and define general attributes. A structure of abstract models is provided to handle all the interaction with the objects and the other simulation parts. The user has to name, describe the model and add an appropriate icon for the model. 
2. Model parameters must be defined for being available in the GUI. The provided data type deals also with complex numbers. Dependent on the type of implemented model the user can define which variables are editable and visiable. This is also the place to set initial values. 
3. Define the update procedure. This is the main part of the model implementation, meaning the mathematical part is done here. This includes also the possible allignment of data from an external source, like a file, with the simulation time. 

For details about model implementation please see the paper on this topic which was presented at the WISES 2015:

M. Pöchacker and W. Elmenreich. Model implementation for the extendable open source power system simulator RAPSim. In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES'15), pages 103–108, Ancona, Italy, October 2015.

and the RAPSim introduction paper:

M. Pöchacker, T. Khatib, and W. Elmenreich. The microgrid simulation tool RAPSim: Description and case study. In Proceedings of the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Asia (ISGT-ASIA'14), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2014. IEEE.

Quick intro to the Open Source Renewables Alternative Power System Simulation (RAPSim)

In a previous blogpost, we introduced RAPSim, a free open source power system simulator with a graphical interface. RAPSim was developed at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt within the Lakeside Labs project Smart Microgrid. The main architect of RAPSim, Manfred Rabl-Pöchacker now produced video giving an ultra-fast introduction to the tool. Got three minutes? Here is the video:



Interested? RAPSim can be freely downloaded at rapsim.sourceforge.net.
If you want to learn more about RAPSim, here is a paper about RAPSim:

M. Pöchacker, T. Khatib, and W. Elmenreich. The microgrid simulation tool RAPSim: Description and case study. In Proceedings of the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Asia (ISGT-ASIA'14), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2014. IEEE.

The Renewable Alternative Power System Simulator - RAPSim

An open simulation software for Micro Grids

It is not necessary to stress all the challenges that come allong with wide range integration of renewables into the power grid at this article. You easily find this somewhere else, in this blog or at another source in the web. But I want to focus your attention on a tool that can help to deal with this challenges and work torwards solutions. It is a lot on matching climate dependent production with the personal demand which is currently noticed only in average. The various influences on residential load profiles are diverse and include weather conditions, availability of other resources, personal habits and also social phenomenas. This variaty is a reason why Marija Ilic speaks of just-in-time and just-in-place services in the conntext of Smart Micro Grids. 

Developing of or researching on such services requires a flexible simulation tool with possibly high usability. This is exactly what RAPSim is aiming at. RAPSim has been developed at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt within the Lakeside Labs project Smart Microgrid and was presented in front of interested audience at the ISGT Asia - 2014 conference in Kuala Lumpur in May 2014. Since then the software project is downloadable for free at Sourceforge.net. 

Connected Smart Grid Objects 

The simulation field is a lattice where the user designs a scenario by placing different "grid objects", e.g., houses, wind turbines, PV panels, etc. Each of the objects can have a model which does all the inner-object calculations. Algorithms handle grid-wide interactions. User-defined models can extend  algorithms for the grid and/or models for the grid objects. RAPSim provides the interface with following functions:

• A graphical interface to create the intended scenarios and to control the simulator functions.
• Functions to save and load simulation scenarios in a generic xml format.
• A time thread that models time of day and day of the year and handles up to minute resolution.
• Generation of output files in csv-format. Object parameters can be selected to be written into a file at each time step.
• Weather simulation which can be done via stochastic models or simulated by measured data.
• Topological grid analysis that collects objects of the same bus in a list and aggregates their parameter values.
• Administration of algorithms for grid-wide calculations.
• Administration of object specific models that can be easily implemented by the user.

The software is written in Java and provided with the source code so that it can be imported into a Java IDE such as eclipse. The development of the software is still ongoing. Try it out and give us feedback by adding a comment or sending a ticket to helps us to further improve it. Please spread the news about the tool, while we will do the best on our part so that onces RAPSim may become a synonym for rapid simulation in the field of mirco grids.
Once more here the link to the sourceforge page.

Publications on RAPSim (with links to fulltext PDF):

M. Pöchacker, T. Khatib, and W. Elmenreich. The microgrid simulation tool RAPSim: Description and case study. In Proceedings of the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Asia (ISGT-ASIA'14), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2014. IEEE.