European Research Infrastructure supporting Smart Grid and Smart Energy Systems Research, Technology Development, Validation and Roll Out: D-JRA1.1 Benchmark Scenarios

This document presents results from the “Benchmark Scenarios” activity conducted in the ERI-Grid 2.0 project. The main objective of this activity is to establish reference benchmarks for validating concepts and implementations of smart grid technologies to be further used in the ERIGrid 2.0 project and by interested external users. Benchmark configurations are very valuable instruments for providing a comparative assessment of new technological approaches and implementations. Based on the Functional Scenarios (FSs) previously defined as the high-level scenarios in ERIGrid 2.0 to provide system descriptions, corresponding Use Case (UC) and Test Case (TC) descriptions, and experimental setup descriptions, this document presents the three benchmark configurations that have been defined and the ready-to-use numerical models that have been developed. The benchmarks are independent and each benchmark targets one or more FSs. The first benchmark consists of a microgrid configuration with relatively high penetration of power electronics conversion and includes several renewable energy sources. The second benchmark represents a multi-carrier energy system linking thermal and electrical distribution networks through a power-to-heat facility. Finally, the third benchmark models a smart grid with an explicit representation of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) layer. An overview of the three benchmarks developed within ERIGrid 2.0 is provided below.

Name Domain Simulation Environment
Electrical Network Electrical MathWorks MATLAB/Simulink
Multi-Energy Networks Electrical, Thermal pandapower, Modelica, Python
ICT-Enhanced Power Systems Electrical, ICT DIgSILENT PowerFactory, Mininet
The present document provides a brief summary of these three benchmarks organised in separate sections. Each of these sections includes the main motivation for the benchmark configuration, the general structure of the considered system, and examples of use. Finally, recommendations for better use and known limitations are reported.

The intention of this work is to provide an overview to the interested reader without duplicating the information contained in the Preparing Concise Information for Simulation Experiments (PreCISE) templates that should be considered as the main source of documentation of these benchmarks. In this perspective, this document contains the reference directing to the PreCISE documents for a more comprehensive and exhaustive description template of the experiment regardless of the tools and models. The corresponding models and documentation are available at an Open Access (OA)/Open Source (OS) repository.