Energies 2018, 11(4), 876; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11040876
Real-Time Simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed for Distribution Synchrophasor Applications
1
Center for Energy, Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna 1210, Austria
2
Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Center for Advanced Power Systems, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 26 February 2018 / Revised: 29 March 2018 / Accepted: 5 April 2018 / Published: 10 April 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methods and Concepts for Designing and Validating Smart Grid Systems)
Abstract
With the advent of Distribution Phasor Measurement Units (D-PMUs) and Micro-Synchrophasors (Micro-PMUs), the situational awareness in power distribution systems is going to the next level using time-synchronization. However, designing, analyzing, and testing of such accurate measurement devices are still challenging. Due to the lack of available knowledge and sufficient history for synchrophasors’ applications at the power distribution level, the realistic simulation, and validation environments are essential for D-PMU development and deployment. This paper presents a vendor agnostic PMU real-time simulation and hardware-in-the-Loop (PMU-RTS-HIL) testbed, which helps in multiple PMUs validation and studies. The network of real and virtual PMUs was built in a full time-synchronized environment for PMU applications’ validation. The proposed testbed also includes an emulated communication network (CNS) layer to replicate bandwidth, packet loss and collisions conditions inherent to the PMUs data streams’ issues. Experimental results demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of the developed PMU-RTS-HIL testbed by producing large amounts of measurements under typical normal and abnormal distribution grid operation conditions. View Full-TextKeywords:
real-time simulation; hardware-in-the-Loop; synchrophasors; micro-synchrophasors; distribution phasor measurement units; distribution grid; time synchronization
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Stifter, M.; Cordova, J.; Kazmi, J.; Arghandeh, R. Real-Time Simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed for Distribution Synchrophasor Applications. Energies 2018, 11, 876.
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