THYME: Toolkit for HYbrid Modeling of Electric power systems
THYME is a simulation tool for studying the interaction of controls, communications, and electro-mechanical dynamics in a power system. This is not a simulation package like PSS/E, PSLF, and other similar, power system simulators. THYME is C++ library for building simulators that integrate its modules for power system dynamics with existing simulators for communication networks (e.g., NS/2 and OMNET++), discrete control systems, and discrete event simulation packages in general. Applications of TYHME include:
The study of control systems based on demand response.
Impact and use of specific communications technologies and intelligent sensors (e.g., PMUs) on situational awareness, control, or both.
The design and analysis of wide area diagnostic technologies that depend critically on communication networks.
THYME consists of three major elements:
A module for simulating electro-mechanical dynamics. This module includes rudimentary speed and voltage control at the generators, a framework for modeling discrete sensors, and a simulation method designed specifically for interacting with discrete event models of control and communication networks.
Predefined events for removing transmission lines, disconnecting generators, and changing load.
IEEE standard models of loads; these can be used to model any mix of constant impedance, constant power, and constant current load and load that is sensitive to frequency.
A new method for calculating frequency sensed at a load. Accurate modeling of sensed frequency is critical for the design of automatic demand response systems.
Model initialization from load flow data in the IEEE Common Data Format and PTI format.
To build and use this software you need to following packages:
The THYME source code.
The adevs simulation framework, which is available here (you will want the most recent snapshot from the SVN repository, which is here). The THYME is a module constructed for this simulation framework, and examples of using the adevs/THYME conglomerate to build a complete simulator can be found in Integrated Hybrid-Simulation of Electric Power and Communications by J. Nutaro, P.T. Kuruganti, L. Miller, S. Mullen, and M. Shankar, published in the Proceedings of the Power Engineering Society's General Meeting, pp.1-8, June 2007.
An LU solver. THYME will work with LAPACK or SuperLU. There is also experimental support for MUMPS and TRIBLOCK. LAPACK is (probably) the easiest to install; most Linux distributions either include it by default or have it in a package that can be installed. If you want to simulate large (1000's – 10,000's of buses) then you will need one of the other three, but expect to spend a little time to getting these alternatives installed and working.
A network simulator if you want to build models that include a communication network. Both NS2 and OMNET++ have been used in this capacity. See the reference above and also Building Software for Simulation for examples of how to integrate these simulators with adevs and THYME.
Doxygen and latex if you want to build the documentation. These are probably already installed on your system, and if not finding a package for your Linux distribution should be easy.
Building the THYME library and its documentation is a two step process. Step 1) Edit the file make.inc for your build environment. Detailed instructions are in the make.inc file. Step 2) In the top-level directory type 'make all'. This will build the documentation, which consists of a description of the model and the API documentation and the file src/libthyme.a which is a static link library. If you are intrepid, you can run 'make alltests' to execute the test cases. Use 'make allclean' if you want to start over. Examples of how to use THYME are in the examples directory.
THYME is open source software released under this UT-Battelle license. Questions and comments concerning this software can be sent to nutarojj@ornl.gov.