Overview

This section gives an overview about DISCO and its workflows.

DISCO can be used for distributed grid system simulation analysis. The analysis types are:

  • Snapshot Impact Analysis

  • Static Hosting Capacity Analysis

  • Time Series Impact Analysis

  • Dynamic Hosting Capacity Analysis

The diagram below shows the DISCO workflow:

_images/DISCO-Workflow.png

As shown from the diagram, the main steps to run an analysis workflow are:

  • Prepare the OpenDSS models with a given data source.

  • Transform the source OpenDSS models into DISCO models.

  • Configure JADE jobs with the DISCO models.

  • Run the jobs with JADE.

Data Sources

DISCO supports OpenDSS models in several data formats:

  1. Generic Model, this format supports any user-defined OpenDSS model - Generic Power Flow Models.

  2. SourceTree1 Model, this format requires directory structure tree1 defined by DISCO - SourceTree1 Model.

  3. SourceTree2 Model, this format requires directory structure tree2 defined by DISCO - SourceTree2 Model.

  4. GEM Model, Grid-connected Energy systems Modeling

  5. EPRI Model - J1, K1, and M1, https://dpv.epri.com/feeder_models.html

Transform Model

Given an analysis type, the source OpenDSS models need to be transformed into DISCO models which then can be used as inputs for configuring JADE jobs.

Note

The Generic Model workflows do not use this step. DISCO uses those models directly.

Config Jobs

DISCO configures JADE jobs from standard DISCO models for specific analysis types. The output is a configuration JSON file.

Submit Jobs

JADE parallelizes execution of the jobs on a local computer or an HPC. Execution on an HPC is highly configurable depending on the job resource requirements.

Result Analysis

After jobs complete JADE can assist with analysis by showing summaries of individual job status, errors and events, job execution times, and compute resource utilization statistics.