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In this presentation, a novel nine-level inverter topology for an open-end winding IM, using a two-level and hybrid five-level inverter has been discussed. The hybrid five-level inverter is realized by cascading a three-level FC inverter and capacitor fed H-bridges in each phase. The proposed topology requires fewer components as compared to existing topologies of nine-level inverter. Modified LSPWM based control scheme is used which offers less switching of the devices at lower speed range. It has been shown that switching occurs in two-level inverter only for half of the fundamental period; this reduces the switching losses and improves the overall efficiency of the system. The entire system is experimentally verified on 1.5kW open-end winding induction motor for the entire modulation range in V/f control mode, at no-load in the RT-LAB environment. The effectiveness of the capacitor balancing algorithm is experimentally tested and verified. The stable operation of the inverter for various modulation indices and stability of the inverter voltage levels during sudden acceleration have been validated experimentally. The experimental results show the potential of the discussed inverter topology for industrial drive applications.


Sanjiv Kumar received the B.E. degree in Electrical And Electronics Engineering from Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, India, in 2000 and M.Tech.and Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, in 2006 and 2016 respectively. He is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Harcourt Butler Technical University, Kanpur, India as Assistant Professor since 2007. His research interests include open-end winding induction motor drive, multilevel power converters/inverters, drives, pulse-width modulation techniques and power quality.


Paper: Vehicle-to-Grid System Supplying Flexible Charge/Discharge Capability for House, Building, and Power System, https://mobilityintegrationsymposium.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2019/10/EMOB19_142_posterpaper_Oshikubo_Yuta.pdf



Motor HIL is becoming an indispensable tool in EV developments where MBD is a must. Reliability and effectiveness of the motor HIL depend on motor models which need to be accurate and simulation based. JSOL started JMAG-RT in 2003 responding to customers demand for the same level of accuracy as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and has been partnering with OPAL-RT since 2006 providing high speed motor HIL running on FPGA. JMAG-RT is now used in many advanced machine developments in industries and being developed pursuing further fidelity, flexibility and speed to deal with complex phenomena and applications such as phase failure, losses, multi-phase and resolvers.

Since the motor model is generated from FEA, the accuracy of FEA is critical for the motor model and has been improved significantly in recent years thanks to latest High Performance Computing (HPC) and FEA modeling technologies.

The latest status of the developments and applications will be presented.



Real-time communication in a hybrid microgrid (HMG) system is essential as the various renewable energy sources (RES) are spread over a wide geographical location and the chances of communication failures and data misinterpretation are highly possible. Hence, to avoid such data loss, in the proposed HMG system, the multiple RES and energy storage systems (ESS) are equipped with individual National Instruments based compact Reconfigurable Input Output (NI cRIO) local controllers (LCs), that coordinate their real time status with a central level Opal RT based real time simulator OP4510. The strategy adopted to accomplish the communication among the LCs of the HMG system components using OP4510 and NI cRIO-9073 is discussed in this paper. The proposed communication channel is established using TCP/IP protocol based asynchronous Ethernet enabled local interfaces.

The archived data received at OP4510 is utilized for simulation of various possible system scenarios based on the real time simulation model developed in MATLAB/Simulink (RT-Lab). Any changes in the system status is reflected in OP4510, enabling real time data exchange for further system analysis. The proposed strategy is validated for a case study including bus voltage variations in the DC microgrid due to power misbalance among the RES and ESS. Furthermore, the outcome of the case studies in the real time simulator OP4510 are communicated back to the LCs for ensuring bus voltage regulation and system stability. Hence, the tested HMG system is remotely monitored and controlled through proper communication channel.



When experimenting with cybersecurity technologies for industrial control systems, it is often difficult to develop a realistic, self-contained model that provides an ability to easily measure the effects of cyber behavior on the associated physical system. In this talk, I will provide an overview of PNNL’s Cyber-physical research laboratory and outline some of its key capabilities. I will then talk about how we created and instantiated a microgrid cyber-physical model, where both the power distribution and the individual loads are under the control and authority of one entity. Such a setup enables cybersecurity experimentation where attacks against the physical system (grid and buildings) could be observed and defended from a single entity’s infrastructure. I will describe how our microgrid cyber-physical model achieved appropriate levels of fidelity for cybersecurity effects by integrating multiple levels of simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, and virtualization. Finally, I will also present how we instantiated and validated this test case model in our testbed infrastructure along with an exemplary multistage attack scenario to showcase the model’s utility.



Aditya Ashok is a senior research engineer in the Electricity Infrastructure and Buildings division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and has been with PNNL since February 2016. Aditya received his doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University in May 2017. Prior to that, Aditya interned at ABB Corporate Research in Switzerland for 6 months in 2013, where he worked on industrial control system device forensics. At PNNL, Aditya has worked on multiple projects in technical areas such as power grid cybersecurity, cyber-resilient power grid monitoring, protection, and control applications, buildings to grid cybersecurity, cyber-physical situational awareness, and testbed-based cybersecurity experimentation and validation. Aditya’s research interests include analyzing cyber vulnerabilities in energy delivery systems, assessing potential impacts to system operations, reliability, and economics, and developing novel algorithms to mitigate cyber vulnerabilities and enhance the overall security and resilience of energy delivery systems.



This presentation will present the PHIL research experience gained at KIT, giving practical implementation examples and applications. In particular, applications such as flywheel (60kW) primary frequency response, microgrid (200kW) management system, superconducting fault current limiter performance, and multi-modal “Smart Home Lab” will be presented.



Sebastian Hubschneider finished his studies of electrical engineering and information technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in June 2015 with the academic degree Master of Science. During his time at the University, he specialized on power engineering with a focus on energy grids and the energy sector in general, including markets and economy.

Since July 2015, Sebastian works as a research associate at the Institute of Electric Energy Systems and High-Voltage Technology (IEH), KIT. His research focuses on Power Hardware-in-the-Loop systems in conjunction with energy grids and electrical equipment.



Power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) based machine emulation is increasingly being recognized as an effective approach for simplifying the testing of electric drive systems. In machine emulation, a power electronic converter emulates the behavior of an electric motor, thus allowing testing of a drive system prior to the prototyping of an electric motor. Machine emulation provides several benefits in the electric drive system testing process, ultimately leading to reduced time to market for the drive system. This presentation addresses two important implementation aspects concerning machine emulation. One is the machine modeling approach and level of detail, and its subsequent impact on emulation accuracy. This presentation will outline the necessity of detailed machine models to accurately emulate specific machine behavior. The second aspect is several associated considerations: the closed-loop control of the PHIL interface for machine emulation, the associated bandwidth and other limitations based on the power amplifier selection, and the emulator control interaction with the drive converter controls.


Geomagnetic Induced Current (GIC) blocking devices typically include a capacitor on the neutral grounding path of wye-configured transformers. This type of GIC blocking device was designed as an effective countermeasure to prevent possible damages caused on the power grid by geomagnetic storms, and by the slow-varying component of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP). The insertion of a capacitor in the transformer neutral impedes the establishment of GICs in lines terminated with wye-connected transformer windings. With the presence of a capacitively grounded neutral, however, it becomes important to evaluate that no adverse effects are introduced in the general grid operations. In this context, this study investigates the impact of GIC neutral blocking devices on the functionality of distance protection relays for different values of transformer neutral blocking capacitors, and at different transmission line voltages. This study was conducted with a real-time simulation platform, and the simulations were performed by introducing a phase-to-ground fault at different line locations, and by measuring the apparent impedance at the protection relay location. The results indicated that, for typical values of capacitance considered for GIC neutral blocking devices, the distance protection relay model operates properly, without requiring a modification of the relay settings.




Emilio C. Piesciorovsky graduated as an Electrical Engineer from the National Technological University, Argentina (1995). He received his master’s degree in Marketing from La Plata National University, Argentina (2001). He worked as Sales Manager for Pirelli Power Cables and Systems, and S.D.M.O. Industries. He worked as a Senior Engineer and Protection & Control Engineer III for A.B.B. and Casco Systems, respectively. He completed his M.S. (2009) and Ph.D. (2015) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University, USA. Then, he worked as a Postdoc Research Associate at Tennessee Technological University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Currently, he is a Professional Technical Staff – Level III, working in the Power System Protection area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.




As voltage source converters (VSCs) are increasingly used in many areas, electrical systems now contain more power converters with higher switching frequencies than ever before. This brings additional challenges to system modeling and simulation, especially for real-time and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests. Efforts on the matrix pre-calculation method, system decoupling methods, and converter modeling methods presented throughout the literature are addressing the challenges, but with certain limitations. This presentation explains a general interpolated VSC model that works for various VSC topologies, and that integrates the interpolation technique for high-switching frequencies, allowing system decoupling to overcome the switch number limit. The model is validated through two test systems with both open- and closed-loop controls. Results show the model has both a fast simulation speed and an equal or better accuracy at a 50 µs time step, compared with the reference model at a 1 µs time step, and that therefore, this methodology is suitable for real-time simulation and HIL tests.


The evolution of traditional electrical grids towards cyber-physical systems (CPS) depends on the deployment of novel communication infrastructures to facilitate new control functions. This tendency makes the grid more intelligent, but at the same time more vulnerable to cyber threats. The real-time Cyber-Physical System simulation platform provided by OPAL-RT Technologies and Scalable Network Technologies allows users to study the complete system dynamics with or without cyberattacks, and test intrusion detection systems and defense operations in a flexible, scalable and closed-loop testing environment. As an example, a microgrid control use case is presented to show the impacts of cyber attacks on an IEC 61850 network.


With certain electrical system studies and testing applications, FPGA-based simulation must be used in order to meet performance and accuracy objectives. Recent technological advancements impose further major challenges in terms of real-time simulation of power systems, including fast power electronics components in areas such as microgrids, distribution networks, and More Electric Aircraft (MEA) power systems. These challenges include both the efficient distribution of large grids over several FPGA boards and accuracy while simulating fast-switching power converters. This presentation describes the advantages of the Multi-FPGA-based real-time simulation of power systems, explains some of the challenges encountered in real-time simulation, and discusses various methods of addressing these challenges and solving the linked problems that may arise. Two case studies are then presented: I) the real-time simulation of a micro-grid connected to a large distribution network containing 210 bus bars; and ii) a model approximately representing the Boeing 787 More Electric Aircraft, developed using publicly available data.


Swansea University is looking into the application of ancillary services provided by PV inverters and Energy Storage Units to distribution systems. This presentation will describe these applications and how RT-LAB will be used to support the validation of the developed control systems.


We are using Ephasorsim for dynamic simulation of a large eastern regional grid of PGCIL for the development of wide-area distributed control to improve the stability of the system. In this presentation, I am going to discuss the overall experience of using Ephasorsim for large grid simulation and the issues faced by us.


The project i-Automate deals with creating protection and control functions for smart grids on a unified, modular and reusable software-hardware platform. There are multiple measurement points in the distribution grid with which protection and control functions are tested. Since it is not possible to experimentally verify all algorithms in the field, the RTS offers a very good option for simulating the grids thereby verifying and optimizing the implemented algorithms


The presentation will focus on MARTINE (Multi-Agent based Real-Time Infrastruture for Energy) developed in the Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal. It is a real-time simulation infrastructure with multi-agent technology that models smart-grid players and components and allows its realistic simulation as it is integrated with OP5600 and a 4,5 kVA amplifier. Different business models and decision-making algorithms are accommodated in order to support research on local markets, demand response, microgrids, buildings, and many other possibilities. The case study of a farm operating as a microgrid with concerns on irrigation energy consumption, and the modeling of its components, will be presented.


The matrix converter (MxC) is an AC-to-AC direct power converter. It features low EMI, low common-mode voltage and potentially a higher power density compared to back-to-back counterparts. Combined with the latest SiC devices, the converter efficiency could be higher than 99%. One major concern of MxC is the 86.6% voltage gain limitation. In this research, the MxC is operated in boost mode to step-up the output voltage above 86.6% of input voltage. Both classical cascaded control and model predictive control (MPC) were considered. The rapid control prototyping (RCP) system was adopted to assess the control design on a custom-built 15 kW SiC-based MxC hardware. The interface between the RCP system and the SiC power stage were carefully designed and verified.


Boran Fan received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2013 and 2018, respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral research scholar with the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. His research interests include topology and control of multilevel converters, renewable energy generation, and wide band-gap semiconductors.




By the time the current crop of students graduate from college, 50% of the jobs that exist today will no longer exist. Learn how training students in robotics digitally through PC simulations and Virtual Reality will not only train more workers faster but will attract a diversity of talent currently under-represented in the field. I’ll share more about our research to date and give attendees a first look into our virtual robotics platform.


Jennifer Javornik is a technology executive who specializes in business development, partnership management, revenue growth, and entrepreneurship. She is currently the Vice President of Sales for Filament Games, a video game studio that specializes in digital games, simulations, VR and AR experiences for impact. She is also a founding member and former Executive Director of the Wisconsin Games Alliance. For kicks, Jennifer authors a series of children’s books highlighting real-life working moms in STEM careers. Jennifer has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.S. in Information Technology from Northwestern.




High-voltage direct current (HVdc) converters consist of several hundred-thousands of modules present in them. There is research required to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of HVdc converters. There is also research required in the fault tolerance capability in HVdc converters. To achieve the same, there is active research on the modules circuits, gate drivers, advanced semiconductor devices, protection circuits in the modules, among others. To research modules in HVdc converters, there is a requirement for an emulator to produce the realistic operating conditions to evaluate the modules. Towards the same, this presentation presents an emulator named “Power Electronic Hardware-in-the-loop (PE-HIL)” that enables the evaluation of individual modules in a HVdc system under realistic operating conditions.


Suman Debnath received his bachelors and masters from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in 2010, and a doctoral degree from Purdue University in 2015. He has since been working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is currently a research and development (R&D) staff over there. He has published over 30 publications and has been awarded several projects from the Department of Energy (DOE). His research interests include applied mathematics for simulation, modeling, and control of power electronics in various applications (including high-voltage direct current systems, wind, PV, high-power drives, among others).




A wind energy conversion system (WECS) is created based on an analysis and simulation of wind speeds measured and recorded for one year at two highs at the municipality of Soto La Marina, Tamaulipas, Mexico; from this information, the most probable wind speed and the corresponding turbulence intensity is calculated and applied. The WECS is composed of an active front-end (AFE) converter topology using four voltage source converters (VSCs) connected in parallel with a different phase shift angle at the digital sinusoidal pulse width modulation (DSPWM) signals of each VSC. The WECS is formed by the connection of five type-4 wind turbines (WTs). The effectiveness and robustness results are assessed by complete mathematical model and corroborated by the simulation results in MATLAB-Simulink® (Matlab, Mathworks, Natick, MA, USA) and experimental results using the real-time simulator from OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES® (Montreal, QC, Canada); producing a power capacity of 10 MVA.



Nadia Maria Salgado-Herrera received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo (UMSNH) in 2016, and her M.S. and BSc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Electronic Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Morelia (ITM), in 2009 and 2011, respectively. She has a specialty in semiconductor technology design from CINVESTAV, which she received in 2009. She has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, United Kingdom (UK). She is currently a Research Associate at the Instituto de Energias Renovables – Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (IER-UNAM).

She has distinctions, such as: belonging to the National System of Researchers since 2019, getting the State award for Young Merit in science and technology in 2016, acquiring the Municipal Award for Young Merit in the academic field in 2016 and obtaining the National Prize for creativity in 2009. She has a scientific production of 30 national and international technical-scientific papers. She currently has three national patent applications. She has experience in the power electronics prototype implementations and in the participation in funding projects. Her research areas include power electronics, power quality, wind energy, and renewable energy.





In power system engineering, a digital twin is a virtual representation of the grid that allows you to understand and predict its behavior. However, due to the sensitive and confidential information the use of digital twins is limited to transmission system operators and utilities. As a consequence, the design, test and validation of any proposed implementation by the research community or the industry is limited to existing benchmark models. Nevertheless, most of these test bed systems lack the complexity or size of modern power grids. Alternatively, it is possible to create synthetic networks that have a similar topology and characteristics of a grid based on publicly available data. Several existing synthetic networks are based on meshed power systems and are available for phasor simulations or energy economic studies. This work aims to expand the research related to synthetic networks by deriving and developing one based on the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM), a longitudinal power system. The model, being jointly developed with OPAL-RT’s AXES and eDBsim teams, will allow real-time electromagnetic transients simulations in OPAL-RT’s HYPERSIM.


Felipe Arraño-Vargas received the B.Sc. degree and the Professional Title in electrical engineering from the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. From 2014 to 2016, he worked as a Power System Analyst at Transelec, Santiago, Chile. In 2017, he was awarded the Becas-Chile scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. degree at the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, UNSW Sydney, NSW, Australia. His research interests include power system modeling, power system stability, phasor-measurement units, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission, multi-terminal HVDC systems, and real-time digital simulations.




This work consists of a STATCOM Real-Time implementation based on a novel cascaded multilevel converter topology, which has some constructive advantages in relation to the multilevel converters topologies most used in the literature. Its constructive simplicity contrasts with the impossibility of using classic PWM switching strategies, presenting several short-circuit states, which can cause damage to its internal components and make this topology unfeasible for these cases. Thus, through an algorithm it was possible to map all possible switching states of the proposed converter and combine them with a model-based predictive control to prohibit the action of all impractical switching states guaranteeing the power quality of the converter without the occurrence of short circuits. As it is a high frequency drive, it was necessary to use a Hardware-In-the-Loop platform present in the OPAL-RT 5700, which provided the complete implementation of an Optimal Switching Vector Model Predictive Control (OSV-MPC) and the complete emulation of the power plant through the eFPGASIM tool present in the equipment. The real time obtained results prove the effectiveness of the proposed multilevel topology and the OSV – MPC control strategy.


Renner Sartório Camargo was born in Vitória, Brazil, in 1981. He received the graduation degree in 2006, and the Master degree from the Federal University of Espírito Santo – Ufes, Vitória, Brazil, in 2014, both in electrical engineering. He is currently Ph. D. student at the same University in partnership with the Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain, and is Professor in the Department of Control and Automation Engineering, Espírito Santo Federal Institute – Ifes, Serra, Brazil. His current research interests include high power STATCOM, modular multilevel converter, power electronic transformer, high power semiconductor device, and ac transmission and distribution system.




Interleaved DC/DC buck converters are commonly used in point-of-load applications when high output current is required. However, multiphase series capacitor converters have significant advantages when high step-down conversion is required. Depending on the number of paralleled modules, a large amount of interleaved PWM outputs and analog inputs are needed when using a digital controller. In this context, an OPAL-RT OP4200 digital real-time simulator with a customized cassette layout is used for this application. In this presentation, operation principles of the multiphase series capacitor converter are provided, the selection of the OP4200 device is justified, and details about the digital implementation of the RCP platform are presented.


Oihane Cuñado received the B.Sc. degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation from the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain, in 2019. Currently, she is finishing the M.Sc degree in Advanced Electronics Systems of the University of the Basque Country.

Since 2018, she colaborates as a researcher with the Applied Electronics Research Team (APERT) of the University of the Basque Country, implementing real-time simulation models with the eHS solver, and also rapid control prototyping platforms in both OPAL-RT OP4510 and OP4200 devices.





In today’s interconnected power grids, low-frequency oscillations is a significant issue limiting the power transfer capability and even deteriorating power system security due to potential low-damped or even undamped oscillations. Typically, local controllers (e.g., power system stabilizers on generators) have been used to suppress these low-frequency oscillations. Conventionally, these controllers are designed based on the system circuit model around a particular operating point, and tuned for hypothetical critical operating conditions. However, they may not perform as well as expected in some extreme cases due to their limited adaptiveness. Synchronized measurements provided by PMUs enable the design and development of wide-area oscillation damping controllers that are adaptive to the grid’s varying operating conditions to overcome the limitations of traditional controllers.

This presentation will introduce a wide-area damping controller (WADC) that was designed and implemented by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. The WADC utilizes solely measurement-based techniques and suppresses the oscillatory modes of the system in an adaptive manner.

The presentation will describe results from the performance assessment of the WADC as well as the real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulation setup at the AGILe lab, where the WADC was evaluated using OPAL-RT’s ePHASORSIM for various large scale electrical grids. The Advanced Grid Innovation Laboratory for Energy, AGILe, is a world-class power systems laboratory with a simulation and testing facility and was established in 2017 by the New York Power Authority (NYPA).


Hossein Hooshyar (S’00–M’14-SM’20) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, in 2012. He has been a Technical Leader with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), White Plains, NY, USA, since 2018. Prior to joining EPRI, he took various research positions at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA; the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; and the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. His research interests include digital simulation of power systems, integration of renewable energy resources, and applications of PMU data for smart grids.





In this presentation, we investigate the impact of synchrophasor estimation algorithms in monitoring and control applications for power systems characterized by reduced inertia. In OPAL-RT simulation environment, we have developed a full-replica of the IEEE 39-Bus power system, where we introduced wind power plants, a battery energy storage system and dynamic load profiles. In such a challenging scenario, we deployed in each node two PMUs – inspired by two consolidated window-based synchrophasor estimation algorithms – and we have reproduced different use cases in order to verify the feasibility of a PMU-based measurement and control infrastructure. On one side, we assess the system response to different contingencies and the possibility to get a successful system restoration by means of a ROCOF-based Under-Frequency Load Shedding scheme. On the other side, we validate the benefit of the battery energy storage system on system frequency responses through a long-term simulation of one entire day. The OPAL-RT code – available at our dedicated GitHub repository – enables us to replicate the behavior of each grid component and to get a time-domain recording of the network variable in each node as suggested by current trend in the analysis of point-on-wave data.






Guglielmo Frigo received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Padova, Padua, Italy, in 2008 and 2011, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the School of Information Engineering, University of Padova, in 2015. He joined the Electronic Measurement Re- search Group, Department of Information Engineering, Padova, Italy, in 2011, and collaborated in the successful development of CS-based algorithms in the fields of spectral analysis, biomedical engineering, and smart-grid measurement. Since 2018, he has been with the Distributed Electrical Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Since June 2020, he is with the National Metrological Institute of Switzerland, METAS, Bern, Switzerland. He has coauthored several conference and journal papers on the topics of his research interests, which includes the development of enhanced measurement devices for active distribution networks.

Yihui Zuo received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China, in 2013 and 2016, respectively. She is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with the Distributed Electrical System Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Her current research interests include the impact of battery energy storage on the dynamics of power system with increasing resources interfaced with power electronics, the dynamics and protection strategies for low-inertia power systems through full-replicated modeling.








Introduction to HYPERSIM:

• Overview of component librairies
• Overview of example models
• Using the documentation

Building and running a model:

• Tips and tricks on modeling
• Adding I/Os to a model
• Acquiring and analysing data with ScopeView

• Session 1: General Concepts + eHS solver supported blocks + CPU model
• Session 2: FPGA model : Exernal Circuit Editor
• Session 3: FPGA model : OPAL-RT Schematic Editor

• Session 1: Intro + Create a Simulink Model to run in Real-Time
• Session 2: RT-LAB interface + Extra features
• Session 3: IO Interface + Using IOs
• Session 4: Use of Datalogger + Labview panels

Introduction to Power Systems Real-Time Simulation with HYPERSIM

• Session 1: Intro to HYPERSIM + Running first model + Control algorithms using Library Blocks
• Session 2: SCOPEVIEW + Build a power system
• Session 3: HYPERVIEW + Datalogger + Load flow
• Session 4: IO Interface + Using IOs
• Session 5: Communication Protocols (e.g. C37.118 ) + HIL demo

NREL’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) test bed

NREL’s advanced distribution management system (ADMS) test bed is a vendor-neutral resource for evaluating existing and future ADMS functionalities in a realistic laboratory setting. The test bed uses OPAL-RT’s ePHASORSIM and eMEGASIM products interfaced with an OpenDSS power system simulation through the HELICS cosimulation platform developed by multiple DOE laboratories; and with power and controller hardware. NREL will present an overview of the test bed and the technologies included within it, and also some examples of how the test bed has been used to address industry challenges.




Dr. Annabelle Pratt

Dr. Annabelle Pratt is a principal engineer for the Power Systems Engineering Center at NREL. She works on autonomous management of flexible building load and distributed generation; microgrid and distribution system management systems; and the application of power and controller hardware-in-the-loop techniques to system performance evaluation. Prior to joining NREL, she was a senior power research engineer with Intel Labs, and previously she was with Advanced Energy Industries where she developed power supplies for the semiconductor manufacturing and architectural glass coating industries.



Dr. Murali Baggu

Dr. Murali Baggu is Laboratory Program Manager for Grid Integration at NREL. In this role, He leads the DOE Office of Electricity and Grid Modernization’s Initiatives’ (GMI) programs at NREL. He currently leads the NREL GMI Advanced Distribution Management Systems efforts and Puerto Rico Grid Resilience efforts at NREL. He has extensive experience in advanced grid control and evaluation for future power systems with high penetrations of distributed energy resources. This includes ADMS, microgrid applications, and energy-storage applications. Most recently he served as Manager of the Energy Systems Optimization and Control (ESOC) Group within the Power Systems Engineering Center. Before joining NREL he worked as a Lead Power Systems Engineer at GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, where he developed advanced Volt/VAR control and DER management algorithms. At GE, he also led the technology development and deployment of large-scale energy storage integration with photovoltaic systems for Department of Defense Marine Corps installations. He has four patents and several publications in these areas. His research interests include grid integration of renewables systems (wind and PV), energy storage system integration, distribution automation and grid operations and control. He has a Ph.D. is Power engineering from Missouri S&T.




Grid operators are facing new challenges in managing the power system due to lower inertia, more renewables and increased penetration of distributed generation. The advent of Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS) provided operators with much greater insight into the dynamic behaviour of power systems which is now evolving to include control functionality to manage these fast dynamics. Wide-area observability within a control scheme provides the ability to develop new techniques for control which can take into account the larger power system behaviour, while co-ordinating the response across the grid where many resources can make up a response, including distributed generation.

However, the design and validation of wide-are-control schemes can be a challenge due to the number signals and possible resources available. In addition, as every power system is different, each wide-area control scheme must be tailored for that system. ePHASORSIM from OPAL-RT provides an ideal platform to enhance this process, incorporating a customer power system model in a closed loop environment which brings significant benefits to accelerating the evolution of wide-area control systems and delivering maximum value to the customers.




Dr. Sean Norris is a Senior Power Systems Engineer with GE Renewables based in Edinburgh, UK. He received his B.Eng from University College Cork, Ireland in 2009 and PhD from Durham University, UK in 2014. Seán’s areas of expertise include wide-area monitoring and control of power systems, control system application design, power system stability and operation under emergency conditions and fast frequency control. His current projects focus on the design and implementation of innovative fast wide-area control schemes to enhance grid stability.



The key reasons for using digital control in power electronics are
• Lower cost
• Complex control requirements
• Configurability
• Optimizing for operating point variation
• Control adaption
• Management of the non-linearity of the converter
• The ability to tune the switching times precisely to minimize the power loss and maximize the efficiency.

The advantages of digital control of power electronics bring with them challenges. Dealing with these challenges before they expose problems is the key to fast product delivery and reliable and robust operation. The challenges include
• Limited Number of Bits
• Sampling and limited bandwidth
• Processing Delay
• Producing and maintaining high quality software code

The presentation explores the detail of these challenges and presents tools, methods and quality approaches to address them.


Hamish Laird is CTO at ELMG Digital Power, Inc. His work is helping people realize the benefit of digital power electronics control to speed time to market, minimize the converter cost, maximize efficiency and provide stable robust operation. His converter control experience includes HVDC transmission control, hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles and rail traction along with telecom power and battery energy storage. He has thirty years of experience in the design, research, development and commercialization of power converters with strong focus on manufacturability and production.

Hamish worked for Alstom Grid, Aucom and Eurotherm Drives before completing his Doctorate in Shunt Active Filtering and founding ELMG Digital Power. Current ELMG Digital Power customers include large electrical OEMs such as ABB, energy storage companies, traction companies and automotive companies.

Hamish recently worked with the PSMA (Power Supply Manufactures Association) to develop guidelines for software quality in the digital control of power electronics. He is a regular and well-respected presenter at APEC and other conferences.


eHS is OPAL-RT’s nanosecond power electronics solver for real-time simulation on FPGA. This presentation focuses on features, applications and enhanced workflows in the new version, featuring new components (transformers, line models, switching functions, and switches) as well as improved accuracy and precision. The improved usability of eHS’ workflows comes from the powerful and intuitive Schematic Editor, which enables construction, editing and integration of circuits, and is integrated within eHS. This new generation of solver has use cases within all types of electrical conversion testing, like renewable energy conversion (photovoltaics, wind power, battery management and microgrid), industrial drive systems, electric transportation and power electronics research.



With the support of his team, Christophe leads the company’s product vision and strategy, and strengthens the company’s leadership position in the real-time simulation industry. He is responsible for the product road maps, as well as for capitalizing on new market opportunities.



Power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulations have been increasingly looked upon for design-testing and validation of equipment in various stages of the engineering design and deployment projects. It allows the users to test devices with higher flexibility than a full-scale deployed testbed. However, the process of setting up a PHIL simulation is not straight forward as the PHIL interface, if not designed correctly, may de-stabilize and otherwise stable system. Therefore, the process of setting up a PHIL simulation requires careful consideration of various elements to ensure a stable interface. These considerations along with the use of PHIL in different application areas will be presented. The speaker will also introduce solutions offered by OPAL-RT Technologies in the PHIL application area.



Syed Qaseem Ali got his B. Engg. Degree from NED University of Technology, Karachi and his MS in Electrical Engineering Power and Control from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago in 2010. He obtained his PhD in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in the area of integrated battery charger design for electric vehicles in 2018. He joined OPAL RT Technologies in the January 2017 and currently is a lead simulation expert for the Transmission & Distribution and DER team in the Application eXpertise and Electrical Simulation (AXES) division.

Before joining McGill he worked as a Research Engineer at King Saud University, Riyadh. His current research interests include microgrid controls, DER integration, and power electronic converters for renewable energy applications.



Jean Bélanger is the co-founder, CEO and CTO of OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES. He received his Electrical Engineering degree in 1971 in Laval University, in Quebec City, and his Master degree from the École Polytechnique de Montreal. Also, Jean Bélanger is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Jean Bélanger founded OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES in 1997, OPAL-RT develops and commercializes digital real-time simulators for the design of systems and the testing of electronic controllers.

Under his direction and technological leadership, OPAL-RT became a well-known developer of state-of-the-art real-time simulators capable to simulate all sorts of mechanical and electrical systems, including the fastest power electronic converters used in a wide range of industries – from hybrid vehicles to entirely electrical-driven aircrafts, and from micro-grids to very large AC/DC power systems.

Jean Bélanger began his career at Hydro-Quebec’s System Planning Division and in IREQ. His contribution allows the insulation and co-ordination of equipment and the installation of lines on the 765-kV James Bay transmission system, as well as the installation of static var compensators and series capacitor. He also contributed to the design and construction of Hydro-Quebec real-time simulators.

Today, Jean Bélanger foresee that high-end real-time simulators will soon be available to all engineers, scientists and students by taking full advantage of off-the-self PCs. This is the driving challenge that we have taken as primary goal.




ABB System Drives uses HiL simulators for more than 10 years. The presentation highlights the benefits of real-time simulators in a business R&D environment where large medium voltage drives are delivered to customers with complex and critical applications. It also addresses few technical and organizational challenges faced by the team towards RT-simulators. Finally, it presents the future opportunities for HiL simulation and projects foreseen in the next years in the business.

Mathieu Giroux is working for ABB in Turgi, Switzerland, since 2013. He is currently leading a team that develops control software for power converters driving the largest offshore wind turbines in the world. Mathieu started his career at Opal-RT Technologies in 2007. He moved to the industry in 2010 and has since then continued to use HiL simulators to support his daily work. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique.

V2X promises to improve safety on the road by relaying information among vehicles to help reduce collisions and loss of life. The technology must operate with extreme reliability in a very dynamic environment, with high relative speeds, very low latency for dynamic connections and safety-critical message receipt, in crowded urban environments with interfering signals. V2X systems will use competing technologies including DSRC and C-V2X. However, there are many issues which will need to be resolved. Congestion on the roads will affect the ability to communicate, and mitigation strategies need to be developed. Security of the networks will be needed for trustworthiness. Significant testing will be needed to guarantee interoperability among devices.

The presentation will explain how lab-based simulation that includes urban environments, vehicle mobility, fading, path loss, interference, and cyber security is being used with real radios in-the-loop, under varying conditions with thousands of moving vehicles, to greatly reduce testing time, space, and cost.



Lloyd Wihl is Director of Application Engineering at Scalable Network Technologies in Los Angeles. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, and is a recipient of the NASA achievement award. He has extensive experience in real-time simulation, and has led multi-million dollar projects in fields that include intelligent transportation, air traffic management, synthetic digitized battlefields, network-centric systems, cyber threat assessment, control systems for flexible robotic manipulators, and public safety. Mr. Wihl has published several papers on cyber warfare synthetic environments, and had the vision for, and guided development of Scalable’s Network Defense Trainer, which integrates cyber and kinetic domains.



Learn how to integrate and validate each autonomous vehicle technology of new AD / ADAS sensors.
In this presentation, you will discover the best tools to migrating physical testbeds onto simulation platforms, in order to overcome obstacles the automotive industry faces when testing autonomous vehicle.



Hervé, with 15 years’ experience in the automotive field, leads OPAL-RT’s focus on autonomous vehicle technology. As General Manager of OPAL-RT Intelligent Transportation Systems, Hervé is responsible for defining OPAL-RT’s strategy, roadmap and partnerships.



Microgrids are enablers for distributed energy resources (DER) integration into the distribution systems. In order to optimize the utilization of the sources, optimize the operational costs and ensure resilience to faults on the grid, it utilizes complex control and protection systems for dispatch and transitions from and to grid-connected operation. In order to study the implementation of these systems, digital simulation technologies are used in the industry. As an extension to model-based design used upstream in the engineering workflow, the modeling and simulation approach can be extended to the use of Hardware-in-the-Loop testing using real-time simulators. This presentation will describe different modeling fidelity or approaches that can be applied to microgrid and power system integration studies as well as some simulation algorithms and tools available for that matter. The use of real-time simulators for testing the performance of controllers will be introduced with a focus on specific use-cases. Finally, real research and industrial applications using these studies and testing technologies will be presented to the audience.



Jean-Nicolas Paquin, P.Eng., M.Eng. is Manager of the Application eXpertise and Electrical Simulation (AXES) Division at OPAL-RT Technologies. He has been involved in EMT simulation and modeling since his undergraduate studies and has been passionate about it since then. He started his career in real-time simulation and has experience in the simulation and studies of HVDC controls and protections. He also has worked as a consultant Engineer, involving in studies and specialized testing in power generation and wind farm engineering. At OPAL-RT he initiated and manages a group of experts in fields related to real-time simulation applications and modeling of electrical systems in different domains like protection and control, power system stability, microgrids and more electric aircrafts. As a subject matter expert, he is also involved in market strategy and R&D orientation for key product development and innovation at OPAL-RT. He is a senior member of IEEE and member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (IEEE-PES). He is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Quebec, Canada.



The power hardware-in-the-loop environment at the Institute of Electric Energy Systems and High-Voltage Technology (IEH), KIT, consists of an OP5607 driving two 30 kVA linear 4-quadrant-amplifier. Besides other electrical equipment and different devices under test (DUT) it includes the KIT Energy Smart Home Lab, a smart, automated residential building comprising building automation, measurement devices, and different prosumers, allowing for the provision of ancillary grid services. The research focuses on detailed simulation of four wire distribution systems and emulation of challenging situations in those. This implies the analysis of requirements regarding different time scales and system setups as well as a stable and precise loop-feedback with minimal lag. The presentation will present latest results regarding grid simulation and requirements as well as an overview of the system setup at KIT-IEH.



Sebastian Hubschneider finished his studies of electrical engineering and information technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in June 2015 with the academic degree Master of Science. During his time at the University, he specialized on power engineering with a focus on energy grids and the energy sector in general, including markets and economy.

Since July 2015, Sebastian works as a research associate at the Institute of Electric Energy Systems and High-Voltage Technology (IEH), KIT. His research focuses on Power Hardware-in-the-Loop systems in conjunction with energy grids and electrical equipment.



The objective of this presentation is to demonstrate a practical real-time approach for simulation of a converter dominated distri-bution grid. To find an equilibrium between calculation efficiency and simulation accuracy, this approach suggested, use ePHASORSIM to simulate the large-scale over-layer grid in phasor-domain, and eMEGASIM for selected buses of 20kv grid in EMT-based detailed equivalent model. The improvement on real time capability and system-usage by using this hybrid ap-proach are demonstrated with real -time simulation results on OPAL-RT.



M.Sc. B.B.A Teng Jiang,
received the bachelor’s degree from North China University of Technology in Business admiration in 2002, bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and M. Eng. degree from Technische Universität Ilmenau in Electrical Power Control Engineer in 2012. he is currently doctoral student at the Power System Group. His special focus lies on Power system modeling and simu-lation as well as distribution grid operation.



Topic of the presentation is the validation of HVDC systems studies with Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) experiments. After a short introduction to this field of research — depicting real-time simulation as the centre spot –, a workflow of designing a PHIL setup with the institute’s available equipment will be presented through an example study case, especially regarding scaling and interfacing methods. Then, the steps necessary to enhance the PHIL setup for validation of studies on meshed grids will be depicted, namely the design of Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) for scaled PHIL experiments.



Marc René Lotz received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Applied Sciences, Wolfenbüttel, Germany. He is currently working at the Institute of Electrical Systems and Automation Technology (IfEA) at Ostfalia University. His field of research is the study of dc and hybrid ac/dc grids using Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop setups and analysing the stability of interfacing methods. He is planning on working towards his Ph.D. through collaborative work with the elenia institute at Technische Universität Braunschweig.



Simulation is widely used for the development of modern electric drives that constitute electric vehicle (EV) propulsion systems. Using conventional offline simulation, it is possible to design and fine tune their controllers, and also to evaluate system performance under steady state and short transient conditions. However, in the EV context, it can be of great interest to analyse the performance of the power system and its control and modulation algorithms under realistic driving conditions, as this can provide valuable information regarding efficiency, autonomy and thermal cycling, among others. However, driving cycles include long transient conditions that are unfeasible to be simulated in a reasonable time frame when conventional simulation approaches are followed. Considering all these, the experience of the Applied Electronics Research Team (UPV/EHU) regarding real-time simulation of EV propulsion systems in an OP4510 platform is covered in this presentation, with special emphasys on implementation details and on the usage of the eHS solver for this purpose.



Edorta Ibarra received the first M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain, in 2004, the second M.Sc. degree in electronic physics from the University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering from the University of the Basque Country, in 2011.

During 2006 to 2007, he was with the Technical Engineering School of Bilbao, Spain. From 2007 to 2014, he was with the Applied Electronic Research Group, University of the Basque Country, where he completed his pre-doctoral formation (2007-2011) and participated as a researcher in several research projects. From 2014 to 2016, he was with Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation, Industry and Transport Unit, Derio, Spain, as the technological leader of the eDrive group in the Industry and Transport area, where his main activities where focused on the research and development of electric vehicle propulsion systems and their control. Since 2016, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Technology, University of the Basque Country.

He is a member of the APERT research group, formed by 13 professors from the Electronic Technology Department of the UPV/EHU, and a varying member of PhD and master students. The main two research lines of the group are Power Electronics and System-on-Chip. In the last 15 years the group has achieved a big number of research grants, contracts and publications. The group has a high rating and it is recognised as A type group by the Basque Government in the 2016 call.

Edorta Ibarra is author of 12 articles in indexed scientific journals (10 Q1 and 2 Q2), 3 technical books, 2 patents, 11 divulgation articles and 48 conference communications. He has participated as a researcher in 26 projects (5 European projects), including relevant automotive and aerospace industrial partners in such projects. Hi has directed 1 PhD thesis in the field of electric vehicle propulsion systems field weakening and sensorless control.

This paper proposes a cyber-physical framework for investigating distributed control systems operating in the context of smart-grid applications. At the moment, the literature focuses almost exclusively on the theoretical aspects of distributed intelligence in the smart-grid, meanwhile, approaches for testing and validating such systems are either missing or are very limited in their scope. Three aspects need to be taken into account while considering these applications: 1) the physical system, 2) the distributed computation platform, and 3) the communication system. In most of the previous works either the communication system is neglected or ersimplified, either the distributed computation aspect is disregarded, either both elements are missing. In order to cover all these aspects, we propose a framework which is built around a fleet of low-cost single board computers coupled with a real-time simulator. Additionally, using traffic control and network emulation, the flow of data between different controllers is shaped so that it replicates various quality of service (QoS) conditions. The versatility of the proposed framework is shown on a study case in which 27 controllers self-coordinate in order to solve the distributed optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm in a dc network. Keywords: cyber-physical systems, smart grid, distributed control and optimization.



Georg Lauss received the Dipl.-Ing. degree from the Johannes Kepler University JKU Linz, Austria, in 2006 and jointly from the Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule ETHZ, Zürich, Switzerland, and the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris, France. He is a researcher with the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna, Austria. His main interests include electromagnetic systems, power electronics, system and control theory, mathematical methods for optimized control systems, hardware-in-the-loop simulation systems, and real-time simulation for electromagnetic power systems.

Georg Lauss is the Chairman of the IEEE WG P2004 Recommended Practice for Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) Simulation Based Testing of Electric Power Apparatus and Controls and the IEEE PES Task Force on Real-Time Simulation of Power and Energy Systems.

Since 2017 he joined AIT as a research engineer in the digitalization team inside the center for energy. His work and interests are oriented towards smart grid applications, with specific focus on the control and management of distributed cyber-physical systems, as well as on the testing and validation of such systems using hardware and controller in the loop approaches.



We present an open-source model of an inertia-reduced IEEE 39-bus power system, where we introduced some renewable distributed generation in order to better represent modern power system scenario.In this context, we investigate the impact of synchrophasor estimation algorithms in Under-Frequency Load-Shedding (UFLS) and Load-Restoration (LR) schemes, relying on frequency and Rate-of-Change-of-Frequency (ROCOF) measurements produced by Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs).



Yihui Zuo was born in Sichuan, China, in 1992. She received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China, in 2013 and 2016, respectively. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Distributed Electrical System Labo- ratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lau- sanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Her current research interests include the impact of battery energy storage on the dynamics of power system with increasing resources interfaced with power electronics.



We present the design and implementation of two new PMU models within the Opal-RT eMEGAsim RTS. The synchrophasor estimation algorithm relies on a Compressive Sensing Taylor-Fourier Model (CS-TFM) approach, and enables us to extract the dynamic phasor associated to the signal fundamental component. The estimation accuracy of the proposed models is characterized with respect to the compliance tests of the IEEE Std. C37.118.1.



Dr. Guglielmo Frigo was born in Padua, Italy, in 1986. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Padova, Padua, in 2008 and 2011, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the School of Information Engineering, University of Padova, in 2015, with a dissertation about compressive sensing theory applications to instrumentation and measurement scenario. Since 2018, he has been with the Distributed Electrical Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, and he is member of IEEE TC-39 working group for measurements in power systems. His current research interests include the development of enhanced measurement devices for active distribution networks.



Full vehicle simulation models are needed to assess attributes such as fuel economy and performance. In this session, you will learn how MathWorks automotive modeling tools can be used for powertrain selection studies. Specifically, we will examine the impact of adding an electric motor at different locations along the driveline (e.g., pre- or post-transmission). In order to make a fair comparison between alternatives, an optimal supervisory control strategy known as ECMS (Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy) is applied. With these closed-loop models, we can quantify the performance / fuel economy tradeoffs for the architectures under consideration and determine an optimal powertrain selection.



Brad is an application engineer at MathWorks, focusing on control design. Prior to joining MathWorks, Brad worked for Ford Motor Company for 14 years. His Ford experience included advanced powertrain controls design, vehicle and powertrain controls for Ford’s Formula 1 racing program, and vehicle dynamics simulation, tools and methods work. Prior to Ford, Brad worked for several years as a logic design engineer at Cray Research. Brad holds a M.S.E. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a B.S. from Iowa State University, both in electrical engineering.



Inverter team at Karma Automotive provides in-house development of power inverters (HW and SW) for world-class Karma EVs. As a main step in inverter SW and HW development, we developed a Hardware-in-the-Loop unit and an inverter fast prototyping tool. The Hardware-in-the-Loop unit is a main tool for SW development task, and it is now being extended to include SW verification tests, too. On the other hand, the fast prototyping tool is an essential tool to facilitate the implementation of inverter HW for the future EV platforms. This unit also provides a powerful tool for development of SW application layer with the possibility of high frequency sampling and monitoring.

The presentation file will discuss the structure of Hardware-in-the-Loop unit (power stage and monitoring) using OP5700 platform and its interaction with control board via CAN bus. It also covers the CAN unit of OP5700 platform to be used for implementation of automatic verification tests. As another discussion, the development of the fast prototyping tool (including motor control algorithm, protection, diagnostics, and CAN communication) using OP4510 platform will be discussed. The testing of the fast prototyping unit with the hardware-in-the-loop unit will be also presented.



Dr Geng Niu, Senior Manager, Powertrain Hardware, Karma Automotive, is leading the electrified powertrain development for various Karma vehicle programs, including EREV and BEV architecture. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, China, followed by his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. In his 3-year career in Karma Automotive, he was leading the in-house product development team to design the second generation power inverters for Karma Revero GT and Revero GTS. Also he was overseeing the e-drive system software development and control algorithms for traction derive and range extender.




Several projects involving power electronic based equipment such as HVDC links, static VAR compensators and wind power plants have been decided and build by RTE. In the long term, the share of power electronics connections into existing ac systems will significantly increase due to the massive penetration of wind power plants and HVDC links. For several years, the French TSO (Transmission System Operator) RTE, has been involved in research and development activities to model and study power electronic devices. To support these activities, numerical tools are needed that offer detailed modeling HV components and controls while maintaining a good compromise between robustness, accuracy, and flexibility.

This presentation illustrate how replicas are used at RTE to improve system operation since 2011. This solution will be presented with real events that occurred on the French grid with HVDC devices. Special incidents are presented, that is: DC cable fault event and AC emulation behavior due to inter-area oscillation. Also, the paper explains how real-time simulation with physical controls supports maintenance, training and R&D activities by providing robust and reliable tool.



Hani Saad (S’07) received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Polytechnique of Montréal in 2007 and 2015, respectively. From 2008 to 2010 he worked at Techimp Spa. and in the Laboratory of Materials Engineering and High Voltages (LIMAT) of the University of Bologna on R&D activities. In 2013, he joined the French TSO RTE (Réseau de Transport d’Electricité), where he is currently involved in HVDC projects as a technical expert and in EMT studies.


The future integration of multi-terminal HVDC networks into the European power grids presents novel challenges to transmission grid operators, grid planners and manufacturers. A major obstacle to building HVDC networks is the limited experience available regarding their control and operation as well as their interaction with AC transmission systems and offshore wind power plants. To address these issues a laboratory-scale multi-terminal HVDC demonstrator – the MMC Test Bench – has been built at RWTH Aachen University within the framework of the EU-Horizon2020 Project PROMOTioN. At the heart of this PHiL demonstrator are eight laboratory-scaled Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs) which are embedded in a real-time simulation of the surrounding AC systems by employing four-quadrant linear power amplifiers.

Within this presentation the setup of the PHiL demonstrator, the corresponding research objectives and first results regarding the controllability of HVDC networks in combination with offshore wind power plants are presented.



Philipp Ruffing was born in Saarbrücken, Germany, in 1990. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from RWTH Aachen University, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. He is currently working as research associate at the Institute for High Voltage Technology of the RWTH Aachen University pursuing the doctoral degree. Since June 2019 he is leading the team “DC Control and Protection”. His research interests include control and protection of VSC HVDC systems as well as their investigation using hardware-in-the-loop systems. Since 2016 he is leading the work package “MMC Test Bench Demonstrator” in the EU Horizon 2020 project PROMOTioN. He is a member of CIGRÉ.



Provision of services over the current structure of power grids with a large number of actors, e.g. distributed energy resources (DER) and active consumers, relies heavily on Information and Communication Technologies (referred to as grid automation system) for metering, processing, communicating and decision making. Moving towards digitalized complex power systems with their unpredictable and susceptible nature, the risk of disruptive events with large magnitude and consequence becomes higher. The grid automation system as a significant integrated component of the power system has to be designed to deal with these disruptive events as well, regardless the origin of the event (e.g. from physical or cyber side). This talk focuses on the significance of real-time simulation infrastructure in validating and development of intelligent grid automation solutions.



Davood Babazadeh is an R&D manager at OFFIS Institute for information technology in Germany since 2017. He received his first master degree in energy engineering from Sharif University of Technology – Tehran in 2008. Then, he worked in industry in the field of reliability analysis in power systems for four years. He received his second master degree in electric power engineering in 2012 and afterwards his PhD from KTH Royal Institute of Technology-Sweden with the focus on distributed control of hybrid AC/DC transmission grids. In 2016, he worked as an area manager in Swedish Center for Smart Grids and Storage (SweGRIDS) in Stockholm. His areas of research are focused on Smart grid resilience, power system automation as well as multi-domain co-simulation testbeds.



System-level analysis capability, centered on modeling and simulation, has been identified as a key enabling technology for solving integrated power system challenges and high-performance power emulation pushes the boundaries of what can be tested prior to full system integration. For example, DC power systems are being applied in an increasing number of applications ranging from EV / HEV automobiles to More Electric Aircraft (MEA) to data centers and micro grids. The stability of these DC power systems is of critical importance to their operation. The presence of constant power loads and bidirectional power flow of many of the loads along with the parasitic inductance and distributed capacitance makes accurate calculation and simulation of stability margins challenging at best.

A bi-directional power source with a controllable bandwidth that can exceed the bandwidth of the fastest load can provide a means of determining system margin. The design and capabilities of the Direct Current Emulator (DCE) from D&V Electronics will be presented as well as using this capability to design and test DC power systems. The DCE can be controlled by a high-speed fiber optic interface with sub-microsecond latency for real time simulation Power Hardware In the Loop (P-HIL) to verify small signal stability analysis. Full DC power systems and power system components can be tested using the DCE as either a bi-directional load to load the power system or as a source to test components intended to connect to the DC power system. When the DCE is emulating the DC power system to test components it can be configured as a controllable source impedance and can generate transients and controlled noise and ripple. In combination with D&V’s electric motor emulator, also capable of real time simulation P-HIL, full vehicle system integration and component compatibility testing can be achieved.



General Manager of D&V Electronics USA, formerly E&M Power. Dave co-founded Mechanical Power Conversion in 1997 to target the nascent HEV/EV market. After merging with Electronic Power Conversion in 2000 to form E&M Power, Dave served as President until the acquisition by D&V Electronics in 2018. Dave has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University, and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Arizona.



EV validation presents a variety of test challenges ranging from high-speed/high-fidelity control and emulation of power electronics to managing massive parallel deployments of testers and the data they generate. Learn how NI’s open and flexible platform combined with OPAL-RT real-time simulation models, tools, and expertise provide a foundation for standardizing test across the EV powertrain.



Nate Holmes is a principal solutions manager for automotive test. He works on applying NI’s platform and test approach to powertrain and vehicle dynamics test applications. Nate’s previous roles at NI include R&D group manager for motion control and machine vision product lines and product management for various embedded systems products including EtherCAT and Expansion I/O in addition to Motion and Vision. He joined NI in 2007 as a member of the Application Engineering department where he was actively involved in supporting NI’s efforts with FIRST robotics. Nate received his BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida.



Biography

Benjamin A. Black is a Principal Market Develop Manager for Power Electronics Real-Time Test at National Instruments and a Lecturer in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Departments of The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in 2007 from the George Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focused in the use of passive haptic robotics for teleoperation. From 2007 through 2012, he worked as a System Engineer at National Instruments focusing on advanced control and advanced simulation projects. Currently he focuses his time on developing the NI platforms and strategy for the area of power electronics and power systems real-time simulation.

Biography

Dr. Nabavi is a Senior Member of IEEE and a professional engineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1987 and 1990, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1996. Upon his graduation he joined the University of Mazandaran/Iran as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since then he has been actively engaged in research and development in the general area of power systems, and power electronics as well as teaching and supervising of graduate students. He was elevated to the rank of associate professor in 2003. Since 2004, he has been with the Centre for Applied Power Electronics (CAPE), University of Toronto, as a Senior Research Associate and has been actively leading/collaborating on research projects with various utilities and advanced industries. During his academic career, he has supervised more than 29 graduate students, published more than 22 journal papers, 45 technical papers, numerous proprietary industry presentations and technical reports and six patent disclosures in the areas of energy systems, power electronics and power systems.


Presentation:

In this presentation, we will discuss about using eHS to develop NI controller for DC Fast Charging System (DCFCS) including a local battery storage system.
The key challenge for fast EV charging is the limitations of the existing power grid infrastructure. Fast charging requires a large amount of energy in a very short time, and the distribution power grid was not designed for this. Therefore, the DCFCS includes a battery storage system to reduce the impact of DCFCS that is incurred during charging. Power electronics converter configuration, its controller design and development of a 60-kW prototype will be discussed in this presentation.



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OPAL-RT’s SLSC conditioning boards are part of the Automotive HIL Testbed Reference Architecture, which is an open and customizable solution allowing engineers to test and develop Electric Vehicles and Battery Management Systems in real time, using latest technologies.



With the Automotive HIL Testbed Reference Architecture, OPAL-RT provides an open, flexible solution that you can customize to adapt to changing research requirements for Electric Vehicle and Battery Management System testing.

By combining modular hardware and our FPGA-based simulation solver to easily import real-time models created with any modeling software, these systems help you take advantage of third party components to i) reduce your setup burden and ii) offer a common starting place for your research team members around the world.

With the Automotive HIL Testbed Reference Architecture, researchers can prototype a wide variety of electrical vehicular devices under test (DUTs).

By guiding the integration of complex automotive testing structures and helping engineers to develop specific EV and BMS HIL testing architecture based on best integration practices, OPAL-RT enables automotive manufacturers to cut costs, reduce risks and improve time-to-market.

The solution combines hardware and software from OPAL-RT, National Instruments, and other prime partners in order that each component can provide robust and unique functionality to leverage your EV & BMS testing systems.

The OPAL-RT & Comemso BMS test bench approach allows users to integrate the BMS testing designed for electrical vehicles. OPAL-RT’s NI partnership solution makes it easier to migrate existing physical testbeds onto real-time HIL simulation platforms when testing all type of BMS testing projects.

OPAL-RT provides the engineering required to extend the BMS HIL test bench’s functionalities, from extra protection, shunt emulation, break-out box, current and voltage sensing to complete integration of other controls for electrical vehicles, ADAS systems or a complete vehicle.