VOLTTRON: An Open-Source Software Platform of the Future

Katipamula, Srinivas; Haack, Jereme; Hernandez, George; Akyol, Bora A.; Hagerman, Joseph

doi:10.1109/mele.2016.2614178

Cited by 47 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Agent communications are established through a central "information exchange bus", as shown in Figure 3, and data is transferred in the form of topics and subtopics. A topic is a feature of a hierarchical structure that is dynamically generated and can be in any format, providing flexibility [54]. An example is "topic/subtopic/subtopic/"="weather/location/temperature/", and data is encoded in Python's dictionary format.…”

Section: Software Platform For Fog Nodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fog BEMS: An Agent-Based Hierarchical Fog Layer Architecture for Improving Scalability in a Building Energy Management System

Lee

2020

Sustainability

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It has been found that a cloud building energy management system (BEMS) alone cannot support increasing numbers of end devices (e.g., energy equipment and IoT devices) and emerging energy services efficiently. To resolve these limitations, this paper proposes Fog BEMS, which applies an emerging fog computing concept to a BEMS. Fog computing places small computing resources (fog nodes) just next to end devices, and these nodes process data in real time and manage local contexts. In this way, the BEMS becomes distributed and scalable. However, existing fog computing models have barely considered scenarios where many end devices and fog nodes are deployed and interconnected. That is, they do not scale up and cannot be applied to scalable applications like BEMS. To solve the problem, this paper (i) designs a fog network where a list of functionally heterogeneous nodes is deployed in a hierarchy for collaboration and (ii) designs an agent-based, modular programming model that eases the development and management of computing services at a fog node. We develop a prototype of a fog node and build a real-world testbed on a campus to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system. We also conduct experiments, and results show that Fog BEMS is scalable enough for a node to connect up to 900 devices and that network traffic is reduced by 27.22–97.63%, with varying numbers of end devices.

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Section: Software Platform For Fog Nodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fog BEMS: An Agent-Based Hierarchical Fog Layer Architecture for Improving Scalability in a Building Energy Management System

Lee

2020

Sustainability

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“…Non-utility devices can be connected to the OpenFMB Harness using COTS equipment, but they do not require a full RTU. For this implementation, COTS controllers running VOLTTRON nodes are used for non-utility devices [47].…”

Section: A Openfmb Harnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The primary protection scheme for the circuits shown in Fig. 8 is based on overcurrent detection, with reclosers acting as the primary protection and sectionalizing devices on the three-phase primary [47]. In this case, fuses which protect single-phase laterals are not considered part of the laminar control system since they do not have any communications or control capabilities.…”

Section: Example Conops For Line-to-ground Faultmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Distributed Power System Control Architecture for Improved Distribution System Resiliency

et al. 2019

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Electric distribution systems around the world are seeing an increasing number of utility-owned and non-utility-owned (customer-owned) intelligent devices and systems being deployed. New deployments of utility-owned assets include self-healing systems, microgrids, and distribution automation. Non-utilityowned assets include solar photovoltaic generation, behind-the-meter energy storage systems, and electric vehicles. While these deployments provide potential data and control points, the existing centralized control architectures do not have the flexibility or the scalability to integrate the increasing number or variety of devices. The communication bandwidth, latency, and the scalability of a centralized control architecture limit the ability of these new devices and systems from being engaged as active resources. This paper presents a standards-based architecture for the distributed power system controls, which increases operational flexibility by coordinating centralized and distributed control systems. The system actively engages utility and non-utility assets using a distributed architecture to increase reliability during normal operations and resiliency during extreme events. Results from laboratory testing and preliminary field implementations, as well as the details of an ongoing full-scale implementation at Duke Energy, are presented. INDEX TERMS Distributed control, microgrids, power distribution, power system protection, smart grids.

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“…The HIL simulation framework uses middleware to interface between the hardware and the simulations. The middleware is built on VOLTTRON™ (Katipamula et al 2016), an agent implementation and execution platform providing many services to easily communicate with physical devices (i.e., control hardware) and other resources (e.g., weather stations and utility incentive signals). In this section, a brief introduction of VOLTTRON is given first.…”

Section: Agent-based Hil Simulation Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

An agent-based hardware-in-the-loop simulation framework for building controls

Huang

Wang

Brambley

et al. 2018

Energy and Buildings

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In general, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) building simulation has lower cost and fewer practical limitations (e.g., scheduling issues) than field tests in occupied buildings, while also overcoming limitations of simulations alone by capturing the full behavior of some physical systems, equipment, and components. However, the implementation of an HIL can be difficult due to the scarcity of appropriate tools. This paper presents an agent-based framework for HIL simulation. It can be used for investigation of controller performance via controller-in-the-loop simulations and also HIL for system synthesis. In the latter case, both controllers and major equipment participate in tests to ensure that dynamics of equipment operation are correctly captured in addition to controller performance. The HIL simulation framework presented allows such actual physical parts to be included in the framework while representing others for which behaviors are better known and modeled in simulation models. The mechanism implemented in the framework to synchronize simulations in software with real-time operation of physical equipment is described. As an example, use of the HIL simulation framework is illustrated through a brief study of speed control of the supply fan in the air handling unit of a variable-air-volume building heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system.

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VOLTTRON: An Open-Source Software Platform of the Future

Cited by 47 publications

References 1 publication

Fog BEMS: An Agent-Based Hierarchical Fog Layer Architecture for Improving Scalability in a Building Energy Management System

Fog BEMS: An Agent-Based Hierarchical Fog Layer Architecture for Improving Scalability in a Building Energy Management System

A Distributed Power System Control Architecture for Improved Distribution System Resiliency

An agent-based hardware-in-the-loop simulation framework for building controls

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