Title: Hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation test-bed for smart grid design, control and performance verification

Authors: Kiyan Elyasibakhtiari; Elham Akhavan-Rezai; Maher Abdelkhalek Azzouz; Ehab F. El-Saadany

Addresses: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada ' Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada ' Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada ' Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

Abstract: The effectiveness of real-time simulation is approved by its reputation in many engineering domains, and, recently, it has been widely appreciated by power system and smart grid research vendors. More importantly, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, as one of the important applications of the real-time simulation, is a great asset for validation tests of real-time system's components before implementation on the actual grid. This paper presents the real-time simulator and the test bed developed in the University of Waterloo, Smart Distribution Systems Research (SDSR) Lab, using the real-time simulator established by OPAL-RT Co. In addition, results of a case study which is implemented in RTS including a Lab-based model of the electric vehicle battery and the charger connected to the grid as well as the controlling strategy are illustrated here.

Keywords: battery charging; electric vehicles; hardware-in-the-loop; HIL; real-time simulation; RTS; process systems; smart grid design; smart grid control; performance verification.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPSE.2014.070091

International Journal of Process Systems Engineering, 2014 Vol.2 No.4, pp.320 - 336

Received: 14 Aug 2014
Accepted: 01 Mar 2015

Published online: 26 Jun 2015 *

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