As the landscape of devices that interact with the electrical grid expands, also the complexity of the scenarios that arise from these interactions increases. Validation methods and tools are typically domain specific and are designed to approach mainly component level testing. For this kind of applications, software and hardware-in-the-loop based simulations as well as lab experiments are all tools that allow testing with different degrees of accuracy at various stages in the development life-cycle. However, things are vastly different when analysing the tools and the methodology available for performing system-level validation. Until now there are no available well-defined approaches for testing complex use cases involving components from different domains. Smart grid applications would typically include a relatively large number of physical devices, software components, as well as communication technology, all working hand in hand. This paper explores the possibilities that are opened in terms of testing by the integration of a real-time simulator into co-simulation environments. Three practical implementations of such systems together with performance metrics are discussed. Two control-related examples are selected in order to show the capabilities of the proposed approach.

翻译：随着与电网交互的设备种类不断增加，由此产生的交互场景复杂性也随之提升。验证方法与工具通常具有领域特异性，主要面向组件级测试设计。针对此类应用场景，基于软件/硬件在环的仿真以及实验室实验均可在开发生命周期的不同阶段提供不同精度的测试手段。然而，在分析面向系统级验证的可用工具与方法时，情况截然不同。目前尚不存在经过明确定义的方法来测试涉及多领域组件的复杂用例。典型的智能电网应用通常包含大量物理设备、软件组件及通信技术的协同运作。本文探索了将实时仿真器集成至联合仿真环境中所开辟的测试可能性，讨论了此类系统的三种实际实现方案及其性能指标，并选取两个与控制系统相关的案例展示所提方法的能力。