Python-based API for real-time control and monitoring of RSCAD models

Real-time electromagnetic transient simulations are suitable tools to study system stability with the increasing penetration of inverter-based resources. On a regional or national scale, these models require a lot of input data, which is often saved in databases and manually uploaded into the models. This paper presents an application programming interface (API) to automatise the data exchange between the database and the simulation tool. By integrating a structured query language (SQL) database containing network topology and parameters with the real-time simulation software RSCAD, our framework avoids multiple data transfers into both database and simulation tool and thus reduces the risk of human-based errors. The application of the framework is shown by changing transmission line parameters in the SQL database, which are then automatically updated in the RSCAD software. Moreover, adjusting an active power setpoint of the simulation model is performed directly in the API. Furthermore, a geographical representation of the network model for monitoring is demonstrated for the voltage magnitudes following a short-circuit fault.