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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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