Laboratory Procedure for Real-Time Simulation Experiment of Renewable Energy Systems on OPAL-RT Digital Simulator
Elutunji Buraimoh, Innocent E. Davidson
Abstract
Simulation technologies have been extensively used to design and develop electrical systems since the mid-twentieth century. Simulation tools have grown in lockstep with the advancement of computational capabilities. Computing technology has greatly increased performance and has become widely available at a constantly falling cost in recent years. As a result, simulation tools have experienced tremendous performance advances and consistent cost reductions. Engineers and researchers can now access inexpensive, high-speed simulators hitherto too expensive, except for the major industries and utilities. This work utilized the RT-LAB tool of OPAL-RT to develop the 250-kW renewable energy system (single-stage grid-connected photovoltaic). Thus, the system design, analysis, and testing are done with an RT-LAB environment using the OPALRT-OP4510 Digital Simulator. The test results are obtained using UTD2025CL Digital Storage Oscilloscope. This work also presents the application RT-LAB software, SIMULINK-based model adjustment, and I/O system and therefore presented prospects of OPAL-RT system in Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testings.