Paper Sharing: An Integrated Simulation/Laboratory System to Investigate Grid/Inverter Stability Issues

We are pleased to introduce the paper” An Integrated Simulation/Laboratory System to Investigate Grid/Inverter Stability Issues” written by H.Takahira, D.G Holmes, B.P McGrath, and L.Meegahapola. The paper proposes an experimental test-set supported by an exact matching simulation model. The model executes mixed inverter/machine simulations using the variable timestep functionality of DSIM, allowing several seconds of grid operation to be simulated in just a few minutes.

Know more about this paper:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9923259

“This paper reports an advanced experimental laboratory test-set that can physically replicate the plant response of large-scale synchronous generators, allowing the dynamic response of power systems with high levels of inverter penetration to be investigated at a laboratory level. The paper also presents a fast execution matching simulation model of the experimental testbed that can be used for control strategy analysis and refinement, before proceeding to experimental investigations. The experimental testbed and the matching simulation model can be easily configured to represent any real-world generation plant.”

The advanced experimental laboratory test-set in this paper is supported by an exact matching simulation model using the DSIM environment. “The model contains a detailed representation of the test-set machines, the converter power stages, and the internal circuitry of the DSP converter controllers. The simulation directly executes both the foreground (i.e. the PWM interrupt) and background software of the experimental test-set converters, allowing this software to be developed, validated and debugged in the DSIM environment before transferring it to the experimental test-set for final confirmation.”

“The software executes in approximately 1/20th of real time because of the DSIM discrete event simulation solver. This means that several seconds of machine run time can be simulated with only a few minutes of execution time. This rapid simulation turnaround not only means that any modifications to the system software or hardware can be quickly evaluated without requiring experimental investigation, but also that the simulation can be scaled up to include multiple test set units operating in parallel with modeled inverter and loads, still executing in a reasonably short time frame and without losing any high frequency definition such as microsecond inverter switching events. Such a performance is key to realistic simulation, investigation and validation of mixed machine/power converter systems.”