Renewable Power Systems: HIL for Hawaii Island with Siemens

The company

Siemens is a global technology leader in electrification, automation, and digitalization. Its Technology division drives innovation in power systems and control architectures for the energy transition. Dr. Ulrich Muenz, Siemens Principal Key Expert in Control Systems, spearheads the Hawaii project—bringing expertise in robust and distributed control, power electronics optimization, and island grid autonomy honed through previous work on the Siemens hybrid power plant in the Galapagos Islands.

The Challenges

• 100% Renewable Target: Hawaii aims to achieve a fully renewable energy grid by 2045, requiring fundamental changes to power system dynamics as conventional plants are retired.
• Frequency & Voltage Stability: As the share of inverter-based renewables grows, maintaining grid frequency and voltage stability without conventional synchronous generators becomes increasingly complex.
• Island Grid Isolation: Island power systems have no interconnection to neighboring grids for backup, making the N-1 security criterion—withstanding any single component failure—particularly demanding.
• Validation Before Deployment: Innovative operator support algorithms must be proven in a realistic virtual environment before being deployed on a live grid serving commercial and residential customers.

The OPAL-RT Solution

The team built an end-to-end HIL demonstrator hosted at PNNL, combining OPAL-RT’s real-time simulation with Siemens’ commercial energy management platform:

• High-Fidelity Digital Twin: Hawaiian Electric’s power system model (originally in PSS®E) was converted step-by-step into electromagnetic transient (EMT) models in PSS®SINCAL and Simscape™, then implemented on OPAL-RT’s real-time simulation hardware using RT-LAB and ARTEMiS.
• HIL Integration: The real-time grid simulation connects to Siemens’ commercial Spectrum Power™ 7 Energy Management System and SIGUARD® DSA assistant system, creating a closed-loop HIL demonstrator that validates operator support algorithms under realistic operating conditions.
• Forecasting & Optimization: SIGUARD® DSA algorithms forecast how the island grid responds to critical events and provide operators with alternate inverter settings to reduce power oscillations—all validated against the OPAL-RT digital twin before real-world deployment.

The results

The OPAL-RT-powered HIL demonstrator delivered critical outcomes for the Hawaii renewable energy initiative:

• Validated Operator Support Systems: Demonstrated the effectiveness of Siemens’ new energy management and assistant systems under real-world operating conditions with high renewable penetration.
• Stable High-Renewable Operation: Proved that stable grid operation is achievable even as renewable generation approaches 100%, providing confidence for Hawaii’s 2045 target.
• Reduced Power Oscillations: The assistant system successfully identified alternate inverter settings that reduce power oscillations caused by variable wind and solar generation.
• Scalable Blueprint: The demonstrator creates a replicable platform applicable to other island and isolated grids worldwide (e.g., Ireland, Australia) facing similar renewable integration challenges.

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