Challenges in Transitioning from Co-Simulation to Practical Application: A Case Study on Economic Emission Dispatch in a Greenhouse Compartment

Co-simulation is a widely applied method used to analyze the behavior of complex, interdisciplinary, and integrated cyber-physical control systems. Despite its prevalence, the transition from co-simulated control systems into practical applications is not discussed as much in the literature. This leaves a gap in the literature because practitioners may not be aware of these challenges. This paper aims to uncover and discuss some of the challenges that arise in the transition from a co-simulated control system to a practical application.
A case study on economic emission dispatch in a Danish industrial greenhouse compartment serves as the fundament in studying these challenges. Economic emission dispatch is a method that can be used in a closed-loop arrangement to decrease costs and emissions of multiple energy production units. The case study is first implemented as a co-simulation which is subject to a subsequent practical implementation. The co-simulation implementation is governed by the open-source framework mosaik that is used extensively in smart grid applications. In contrast, the practical implementation is not governed by mosaik due to architectural design discrepancies. A key feature of the study is the use of software-in-the-loop, which means that the controller being tested is the actual software intended for deployment.
The highlighted challenges include that the core abstractions (master algorithm, scenario-script, and protocol) of the co-simulation framework cannot be transferred to an operational context due to design discrepancies. Despite these challenges, the co-simulation can still serve as a baseline for comparing functional performance metrics during the transition.