Development of a Platform for Securing Interoperability between Components in a Carbon-Free Island Microgrid Energy Management System

Abstract

The rigidity of information technology (IT) has been hindering the development of various businesses regarding energy management systems (EMSs) of power networks, although this area has become more diversified, resulting in changes of elements in the systems due to the introduction of renewable energy (RE) and the new energy industry. In order to effectively accommodate these changes, EMSs should be developed in a structure with a standard-based interface, which can secure interoperability between components in the EMS. In previous studies, the common information model (CIM) proposed by IEC TC57 has been utilized for developing EMSs of power networks, but there are gaps between the existing CIM and an information model for the EMSs of carbon-free island microgrids (MGs), which are a newly introduced form of power network covering multiple islands for reducing carbon emissions. This paper proposes a CIM-based software platform for a carbon-free island MG-EMS to efficiently operate the power network and secure interoperability between components in the MG-EMS. Concerning service restoration of the power network, use cases and business objects representing information exchanged between the components in the EMS are derived, and the existing CIM is extended based on the results of the gap analysis in order to provide necessary information on the MG-EMS. The validity of the proposed platform is verified by exchanging payloads between components in the MG-EMS based on the profile extracted from the extended CIM. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed platform regarding data size and speed of data exchange is presented. Based on the case study results, it is concluded that the proposed platform based on the extended CIM can exchange data between the components in the MG-EMS, achieving reasonable data size and speed of data exchange with the help of the interoperability between components in the carbon-free island MG-EMS.