Enabling resilient microgrid through programmable network

In this paper, we integrate programmable networks in microgrid to provide flexible and easy-to-manage communication solutions, thus enabling resilient microgrid operations in face of various cyber and physical disturbances. Specifically, two contributions have been made: (1) Establish a novel softwaredefined networking (SDN) based communication architecture that abstracts the network infrastructure from the upper-level applications to significantly expedite the development of microgrid applications; (2) Create a hardware-in-the-loop cyberphysical 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 microgrid resilience, particularly for those that have high penetration of renewable energy sources.