A comprehensive cloud-based real-time simulation framework for oblivious power routing in clusters of DC microgrids

In this paper, we propose a novel cloud-based approach for solving the optimal power routing problem in clusters of DC microgrids. To this end, we deploy oblivious network routing design. Each cluster includes multiple microgrids which are connected via DC links in a multi-terminal DC system in a meshed network topology. In the proposed framework, the energy will be transmitted from the microgrid with additional power generation to the microgrid with power shortage to supply the loads internally. According to the nature of oblivious routing algorithm, all of the microgrids belonging to a specific cluster are unaware of the current cluster status. Furthermore, each microgrid does not need to have the access to the current flows through the multi-terminal DC system as well as the generation capacity and load demand of other microgrids. The optimal routing strategy considers two main objectives: 1)managing congestion through the DC lines, and 2) minimizing power loss through the network. The performance of our novel oblivious power routing method does not depend on the topology of network, i.e. it is applicable to both radial and non-radial power networks of different scales and arbitrary number of microgrids. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been verified in MATLAB simulation. Furthermore, we propose a comprehensive simulation platform for further implementation of the proposed strategy on OPAL-RT real-time simulator system (RTDS). In our proposed platform, the communication path between the microgrids can be implemented on a cloud-based environment emulated by OMNeT++.