D7.1 Validation plan
Creators: name: Kavgic, Aleksandar
name: Bastiaenses, Jan
name: Smets, Eric
name: Costa, Sergio
name: Alemeida, Murilo
name: Maryama, Victor
name: Markovic, Jovana
name: Lepojevic, Nikola
name: Maas, Frits
name: Meng, Fanlin
name: Mourshed, Monjur
name: Gay, Matthieu
name: Taylor, Amy
name: Sterling, Raymond
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: This document provides a high-level description of validation activities envisaged for DRIvE as the next-generation, multi-agent demand response (DR) solution, as well as a general timeline of validation activities in the project. Although the validation scenarios are devised for the DRIvE platform and test sites, the scenarios should be universally applicable to other sites and other remote-controlled devices. The document first provides the description of the three different modes of validation activities – offline simulation, real-time cyber and cyber-physical emulation, and physical testing – which allow for a safe optimization and testing of DR services before deployment to the test site. The biggest innovation in this respect is the introduction of the cyber-physical emulation as a testing mode, which means that multi-agent system and DR logic can be fully tested in complete safety, because this kind of testing implies that local energy gateways are connected to high-fidelity models of controlled devices, providing direct insight into behaviour of the DRIvE logic and algorithm, but in the safety of virtualized power (devices are real-time models). After the modes of validation, the document provides the overview of the key performance indicators (KPIs) which are traditionally used to assess the DR system, where the main inference is that the KPIs which can be found in relevant references do not focus on individual services provided in DR programs, but at the general performance of the system from the point of view of large utilities. This conclusion represents the foundation for devising specialized, individual KPIs for various DR services which are to be provided via the DRIvE system. The main chapter of the document, entitled “Validation Scenarios”, therefore contains step-by-step descriptions of use cases and specialized KPIs for validating and assessing the DRIvE performance in each use case. Validation scenarios are organized into six main sections per type of the use case and service, where the first five sections contain use case descriptions of 1) in-building services for the prosumers, 2) community services, 3) flexibility services for the balance responsible parties (BRP), 4) flexibility services for the distribution system operators (DSO) and 5) flexibility services for the transmission system operators (TSO), while the final section contains an overview of cyber security validation and relevant KPIs. The penultimate chapter of the document provides a tentative validation timeline organized per test sites and services being validated at each site, where the overarching principle is to provide about a year of physical testing (that should cover all seasons) which is preceded by a shorter, four-month period of cyber-physical testing which can be used to fully test and optimize the control services before they are deployed for physical testing in the grid. The final chapter of the document provides a general overview of the strategies which will be used to ensure the reliability of the results. At the end of the document there is, of course, a conclusion and the list of references, as well as four annexes: the first annex contains the data capability matrix, the second annex contains the list of KPIs, the third annex contains the list of DRIvE actors (which feature in use cases), and the fourth annex contains the list of requirements for each use case.