Julien Vaubourg

Multi-agent Multi-Model Simulation of Smart Grids in the MS4SG Project

This paper illustrates how the multi-agent approach, or paradigm, can help in the modeling and the simulation of smart grids in the context of MS4SG (a joint project between LORIA-INRIA and EDF RD for example modeling tools of the power grids, of telecommunication networks, and of the information and decision systems. This paper describes the use of MECSYCO as a valid approach to integrate these heterogeneous models in a multi-agent smart grid simulation platform. Several use cases show the ability of MECSYCO to effectively take into account the requirements of smart grids simulation in MS4SG.

Co-simulation of cyber-physical systems using a DEVS wrapping strategy in the MECSYCO middleware

Most modeling and simulation (M&S) questions about cyber-physical systems (CPSs) require expert skills belonging to different scientific fields. The challenges are then to integrate each domain’s tools (formalism and simulation software) within the rigorous framework of M&S process. To answer this issue, we give the specifications of the Multi-agent Environment for Complex-SYstem CO-simulation (MECSYCO) middleware which enables to interconnect several pre-existing and heterogeneous M&S tools, so they can simulate a whole CPS together. The middleware performs the co-simulation in a parallel, decentralized, and distributable fashion thanks to its modular multi-agent architecture. In order to rigorously integrate tools that use different formalisms, the co-simulation engine of MECSYCO is based on the discrete event system specification (DEVS). The central idea of MECSYCO is to use a DEVS wrapping strategy to integrate each tool into the middleware. Thus, heterogeneous tools can be homogeneously co-simulated in the form of a DEVS system. By using DEVS, MECSYCO benefits from the numerous scientific works which have demonstrated the integrative power of this formalism and give crucial guidelines to rigorously design wrappers. We demonstrate that our discrete framework can integrate a vast amount of continuous M&S tools by wrapping the Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) standard. To this end, we take advantage of DEVS efforts of the literature (namely, the DEV&DESS hybrid formalism and Quantized State System (QSS) solvers) to design DEVS wrappers for Functional Mockup Unit (FMU) components. As a side-effect, this wrapping is not restricted to MECSYCO but can be applied in any DEVS-based platform. We evaluate MECSYCO with the proof of concept of a smart heating use case, where we co-simulate non-DEVS-centric M&S tools.

Smart Grids Simulation with MECSYCO

These demonstrations show the current results of the DEVS-based platform called MECSYCO (Multi-agent Environment for Complex SYstems CO-simulation), formerly named AA4MM (Agents & Artifacts for Multi-Modeling [1]), in the context of smart grids simulation with different use cases based on real scenarios.