Enabling Resilient Microgrid Through Programmable Network

In this paper, we integrate programmable networks in microgrid (MG) to provide flexible and easy-to-manage communication solutions, thus enabling resilient MG operations in face of various cyber and physical disturbances. Specifically, two contributions have been made: 1) establish a novel software-defined networking (SDN) based communication architecture that abstracts the network infrastructure from the upper-level applications to significantly expedite the development of MG applications and 2) create a hardware-in-the-loop cyber-physical platform for evaluating and validating the performance of the presented architecture, control techniques, and SDN-based functionalities. Test results have demonstrated that the new architecture can significantly enhance MG resilience, particularly for those that have high penetration of renewable energy sources.