CP‐SyNet: A tool for generating customised cyber‐power synthetic network for distribution systems with distributed energy resources

Abstract

The integration of distributed energy resources and advancement in information technology has enabled the transition of traditional power distribution systems to active cyber-physical distribution systems. A growing amount of research has been done on the modelling, analysis, and optimisation of power distribution system behaviour. However, existing publicly available distribution test feeders are limited in numbers and have minimal features. Furthermore, these test feeders do not include cyber models and are not customisable. To bridge this gap, we propose and develop Cyber-physical synthetic distribution system network (CP-SyNet), a tool for generating customisable cyber-physical synthetic distribution test feeders. CP-SyNet generates three-phase unbalanced test feeders according to users' requirements, while simultaneously considering both the cyber side and the physical side of the network for cyber-physical analysis. The physical test network is developed using a graph-theoretical approach that employs information from existing test feeders. The cyber side considers an equivalent communication network by transforming the physical topology into possible and feasible simulated network. Two examples are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework to generate cyber-physical test feeders.