Reinforcement Learning Environment for Cyber-Resilient Power Distribution System

Recently, numerous data-driven approaches to control an electric grid using machine learning techniques have been investigated. Reinforcement learning (RL)-based techniques provide a credible alternative to conventional, optimization-based solvers especially when there is uncertainty in the environment, such as renewable generation or cyber system performance. Efficiently training an agent, however, requires numerous interactions with an environment to learn the best policies. There are numerous RL environments for power systems, and, similarly, there are environments for communication systems. Most cyber system simulators are based in a UNIX environment, while the power system simulators are based in the Windows operating system. Hence the generation of a cyber-physical, mixed-domain RL environment has been challenging. Existing co-simulation methods are efficient, but are resource and time intensive to generate large-scale data sets for training RL agents. Hence, this work focuses on the development and validation of a mixed-domain RL environment using OpenDSS for the power system and leveraging a discrete event simulator Python package, SimPy for the cyber system, which is operating system agnostic. Further, we present the results of co-simulation and training RL agents for a cyber-physical network reconfiguration and Volt-Var control problem in a power distribution feeder.

Automated summary

Recently, there has been a lot of research on data-driven approaches using machine learning techniques to control an electric grid. Reinforcement learning (RL) provides a viable alternative to conventional solvers when there is uncertainty in the environment. Efficiently training an agent requires a lot of interaction with the environment. This paper focuses on developing and validating a mixed-domain RL environment and presents the results of co-simulation and training RL agents for a cyber-physical network reconfiguration and Volt-Var control problem in a power distribution feeder.