RT26 Workshop - Edinburgh

Dr. Paul Judge is a co-organiser of RT26 Workshop – Edinburgh. With a PhD from Imperial College London, Dr. Judge is currently a Reader in Power Electronics at The University of Edinburgh, where he has been researching and lecturing since 2018. He is also a Royal Society Industry Fellow, and members of both IEEE and CIGRE.

Presentation title: TBD
Presentation topic: TBD

For over five years, Marija Stevic has been an integral part of the OPAL-RT Germany team in Nuremburg, where she is the Power Electronics R&D Technical Lead. Her strong research background spans nearly a decade at labs in the United States and Germany. She holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade, and is currently a PhD candidate at RWTH Aachen University.

Presentation title: PHIL for Product Development and Research Across Power System Applications
Presentation topic:This presentation explores how PHIL enables high-fidelity product development and research across power system applications – from microgrids and e-mobility to DER integration. It showcases GFM/GFL stability analysis, real-world validation, and automated IEEE 1547.1 testing, to accelerate grid-ready field deployment.

Dr. Amitkumar heads the ‘PHIL Applications and Solutions Division’ at OPAL-RT. Amitkumar received his PhD from Concordia University in 2020, on PHIL based emulation of electrical machines. He has close to 10 years of experience in PHIL systems of various applicative domains, ranging from microgrid systems to motor drive systems.

Presentation title: Edinburgh Pulse
Presentation topic: An attendee-in-the-loop view of what’s next for UK power system simulation. A session to explore what matters next for UK power system simulation. Using live input from the room, we will map the study challenges gaining importance, the bottlenecks slowing progress, and the reasons larger or more integrated simulation workflows are not yet standard engineering practice. The session will create a shared perspective on the gap between today’s challenges and what emerging simulation technologies can enable, from EMT/RMS studies and PHIL/HIL workflows to HVDC, IBR, protection, model exchange, and OEM model integration. The objective is simple: listen to the room, reflect back the patterns, and identify the topics worth continuing during the evening networking session.

Presentation title: Co-simulation with Large Area Models and HVDC Replicas
Presentation topic: This presentation describes a co-simulation approach that integrates a large-scale AC network model on one platform with HVDC models on another, while also supporting the connection of replica control and protection hardware. It demonstrates how OPAL-RT and RTDS, combined with hardware-in-the-loop technology, can enhance system analysis capabilities and support future network development.

Yaxing Ren is a Simulation Engineer at The National HVDC Centre; a role that he has served since 2024. Additionally, he is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Lincoln. He received his bachelor’s degree and PhD from the University of Liverpool, both in electrical and electronics engineering.

Presentation title: Physics-informed data driven digital twin surrogates for operations planning and real time control in power systems .
Presentation topic:Physics-informed digital twin surrogates represent a new class of models that bridge high-fidelity, first-principles digital twins and data-driven black-box approaches for modern power systems. By embedding physical laws directly into the learning process, these models enable computationally efficient, high-fidelity surrogates suitable for real-time decision support. In this talk, I will present recent work on developing surrogate models for a range of power system operational planning problems and propose a framework to validate and eventually incorporate these models within real-time digital simulation environments enabled by OPAL-RT simulators. This provides a powerful platform for testing and validating real-time decision support strategies. Finally, I will briefly highlight recent work on decentralised control in microgrids, demonstrating how OPAL-RT-based simulations support validation of advanced control approaches.

Dr. Behzad Kazemtabrizi is Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering and Director of Education in the Department of Engineering at Durham University. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering – Power Systems from the University of Glasgow and is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). His research focuses on advanced mathematical modelling of power systems, with an emphasis on improving operational resilience and reliability in networks with high levels of variable renewable energy integration.

Presentation title: Development of a PHiL testbed for aerospace electrical systems.
Presentation topic: An update on PNDC’s new MW-scale electrical test facility, and current work developing an OPAL-RT-based PHiL testbed for future hydrogen fuel cell aircraft power networks, which will incorporate a mixture of real and emulated components.

Dr. Max Parker is a knowledge exchange fellow at PNDC, part of the University of Strathclyde, working on simulation and testing of components and subsystems for electrified transport drivetrain applications, with a particular focus on heavy-duty vehicles, off-highway and aerospace applications. He has recently been involved in development and commissioning of a MW-scale electrical test facility, and has been developing power hardware in the loop techniques for testing aerospace systems. He has an engineering doctorate in power electronics, machines and drives from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Presentation title: Validated model of AC Cascading Failure Model (AC-CFM) for real-time environments
Presentation topic: This presentation highlights our ongoing work to translate and validate the cascading failure simulation mechanisms of the well-known open-source AC-CFM project into the real-time domain using ePHASORSIM. Challenges include mapping quasi-steady-state models of assets such as generators, and protection mechanisms such as under-frequency load shedding, into their dynamic equivalents, whilst ensuring equivalent results in both domains. The expected output of the work is a generalised phasor-domain environment for exploring the resilience to cascading failure of any power system described by a Matpower case file.

Robert Brown is a research associate in power systems at London South Bank University, where he received a PhD in 2024 for work focusing on smart grid algorithms for distribution substations. Robert has been collaborating with Dr Spyros Skarvelis-Kazakos at the University of Sussex over the past 18 months on the topic of resilience, using ePHASORSIM to model cascading failures in power systems. They are aiming to generalise the quasi-steady-state Matpower-based AC-CFM project for real-time targets including OPAL-RT.

Presentation title: The Role of Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (P HiL) Based Testing and Validation for Grid Compliance
Presentation topic: The increasing penetration of large‑scale renewable energy is transforming power systems, creating challenges in stability, control, and compliance. This presentation highlights the role of testing and validation in enabling reliable integration of advanced technologies, alongside ORE Catapult’s journey toward multi‑MW Power Hardware‑in‑the‑Loop (P‑HiL) testing.

Anup is a Senior R&D Engineer at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult with over 15 years of research experience in the offshore renewables sector, specialising in grid integration and compliance of renewables, offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, and power systems.