Welcome to the Framework for Network Co-Simulation (FNCS) Tutorial. This tutorial features four step-by-step guides that target the basics ('power+power', 'power+network'), a modestly complex transactive control application ('GridLAB-D+ns-3'), and a fully-featured transactive control application with multiple feeders, retail markets, and a wholesale market inside a transmission-level optimal power flow ('large').
The power+power demo showcases the fundamentals of running co-simulations using the FNCS framework. We will walk you through installing FNCS and its one dependency, ZeroMQ, as well as how to run two sample simulators within the co-simulation platform provided by FNCS. The code samples provided will illustrate the principles of co-simulation including message exchange and clock synchronization. Using two toy power simulators are representative of what we call "tick-based" simulators, as opposed to event-based simulators which are covered in the next demo.
The power+network demo increases the complexity of co-simulation by combining a power simulator with a network simulator. Combining tick-based simulators with event-based simulators can be frustrating, but we provide interfaces for each type of simulator.
The GridLAB-D+ns-3 demo will walk you through installing FNCS, GridLAB-D, ns-3, and all prerequisite software. This complex example application demonstrates a real use case of transactive control, exchanging market prices and bids through a simulated network. A single GridLAB-D instance simulates a single feeder and market, where the bids and price signals are routed through the communication network modeled by ns-3.
The large demo will walk you through installing FNCS, GridLAB-D, ns-3, MATPOWER, and all prerequisite software. This complex example application demonstrates a real use case of transactive control, exchanging market prices and bids through a simulated network. Multiple GridLAB-D instances individually simulate a single feeder and market, while the cumulative demand of each feeder is exchanged with a MATPOWER optimal power flow solver at the tranmission level.
We hope you find these two demonstration cases useful. Please use the GitHub Issues to notify us of any problems with the tutorial text.