Generic Colored Petri Nets Modeling Approach for Performance Analysis of Smart Grid System

In the context of smart grid, many have considered energy management approaches and have taken into account local, neighborhood, and/or grid energy sources. In such situations, energy management approaches allow designers to choose the best alternative meeting they may need (whatever decreases the energy cost and maximizes the producer's gains). In order to select the best energy management approach that allows an effective performance and considers the specificities of the studied grid, the designer has to study the global behavior of the system that is based on a specific model before implementation. The contribution presented in this paper is defined in this context. We propose a formal modeling and validation approach based on colored Petri nets (CP-nets). Such approach allows for the development of a generic model representing the overall behavior of the different components (producer, consumer, smart meter, energy management unit, local energy generator, utility) of a studied smart grid. Additionally, existing CP-net formal methods, specifically the state space generation and handling, may be utilized in order to formally verify the specified system (the safety and liveness property) as well as to generate a set of performance indicators. Depending on the obtained indicators, the designer may choose the best energy management approach meeting his/her requirement. An important advantage of our developed approach is that it is parameterized.