RT22 | Testbed for Low Carbon Energy Systems under High Penetration of Power Electronics

The challenges of climate change mitigation targets have arisen significant revisions of power system foundations. As largely exposed in the literature, carbon neutrality of power systems depends on the integration of carbon free energy solutions, which fundamentally leads to a complex interaction between Power Electronic Interfaced Technologies (PEIT) and the existing electrical infrastructure (synchronous power systems). The study of such an interaction has captured particular interest in the field, leading to a profound change in power system stability definitions and the growth of new mathematical approaches such as big data analytics. The paradigm change has emerged from the appearance of new technological advancements in response to climate change mitigation goals, such as wind and solar power, electric vehicles, large-scale storage device, large-scale hydrogen-based energy systems and active distribution, which strongly rely on power electronic converters to get interconnected to power systems. Similarly, the intricate dynamic and information systems resulting from the interaction of these elements has necessitated complex communication and data analytics solutions to maintain real time tracking and fast situation awareness and decision-making respectively. Within these advancements, important theoretical findings can be found in the literature, which mostly rely on software simulations to show applicability. However, hardware test beds to conduct complete, joint demonstrations are scarce and limited. In general, the interaction between the elements is overloYesed, limiting the academic and industrial significance of the findings. In this scenario, a complete hardware testbed that integrates the dynamics of power systems with that of the new technological advancements will allow the scientific community to be at the forefront of the research in low carbon power systems. Such a complete hardware testbed will increase the scientific impact and industrial significance of the findings, leading to more concrete answers to policy goal on energy system carbon neutrality. This talks will present an ongoing projet at USACH that is planned to implement such a testbed using OPAL-RT technology.