RT23 | Establishing an IEEE Recommended Practice “The P2004 WG

The IEEE P2004 Working Group has been established in 2017 and is sponsored by PELS (main sponsor), PES and IES (sponsors). The main aim of this WG is to develop a Recommended Practice providing established practices for the use of the method of Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation-based testing of electric power apparatus and controls. It is intended to be generically applicable in synergy (in conjunction) with any specific testing standard, if applicable. Since HIL simulation has been researched and applied for more than 20 years without having an existing standard providing guidance or best practices, the interest and motivation was high from global research and industry to develop such a framework. In a first step, the core team set up main principles for this work: (i) the work shall be agnostic to the specific real-time simulation and power amplifier technologies but focus on the structures, models, and procedures specific to conducting HIL based testing; (ii) the final document must be as generic as possible, so it does not conflict with exiting testing standards. In a following step, chapters were defined, and chapter leads have been appointed, respectively. Throughout the following years, normative guidance on requirements for power amplifiers, real-time simulators, of HIL interfaces have been elaborated to different classes of HIL testing needs. In a further step, practices for HIL model development, HIL specific documentation for system testing as well as verification and validation of HIL setups have been added by the use of informative Annex. In a final step, the P2004 Recommended Practice document has been prepared and structured by the editorial board for the final balloting stage. This work introduces novel definitions in the real-time research such as “natural coupling” or the architecture of a generic PHIL interface. Theory and practice of real-time based HIL setups are detailed by analytical and experimental works. This Recommended Practice intends to be the first existing standardization framework available for real-time HIL testing of electric power apparatus and controls.