Smart Grids Co-Simulations with Low-Cost Hardware

Smart Grids have nowadays gained wide diffusion and relevance. Due to the complexity of the grid, many Smart Grids laboratories have emerged over the years to provide partially virtualized environments for testing and co-simulation testbeds for the modern grid. However, the costs for setting-up Smart Grids laboratories are substantial, representing a barrier for newcomers and for educational purposes. In this paper, we propose an hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) architectural solution based on Arduino and Raspberry PI boards, supported by the Mosaik framework to simulate different Smart Grids scenarios on a small and cost-effective scale. We highlight the educational benefits that the solution can bring for understanding simulations and HIL in an affordable & effective way in an easy-to-deploy environment.