A Distributed IoT Infrastructure to Test and Deploy Real-Time Demand Response in Smart Grids

In this paper, we present a novel distributed framework for real-time management and co-simulation of demand response (DR) in smart grids. Our solution provides a (near-) real-time co-simulation platform to validate new DR-policies exploiting Internet-of-Things approach performing software-in-the-loop. Hence, the behavior of real-world power systems can be emulated in a very realistic way and different DR-policies can be easily deployed and/or replaced in a plug-and-play fashion, without affecting the rest of the framework. In addition, our solution integrates real Internet-connected smart devices deployed at customer premises and along the smart grid to retrieve energy information and send actuation commands. Thus, the framework is also ready to manage DR in a real-world smart grid. This is demonstrated on a realistic smart grid with a test case DR-policy.