Modeling the Hardware Components of a Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Platform for Photovoltaic Applications

Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) enables the integration of a hardware device into a real-time (RT) simulation environment. This allows testing the performance of a physical device under real operating conditions before it is connected to an actual system. When developing the RT simulation models, there is no consideration of how the hardware device impacts the system because these are not typically modeled. To reduce the risks associated to instability from testing a physical device in a RT simulation environment using a PHIL platform, a high-fidelity simulation model that represents all the hardware components of the PHIL platform can be simulated and used before evaluating the hardware component. Herein, a simulation model of a PHIL platform is proposed, including power amplifier and photovoltaic (PV) inverter models. Simulation results show that the developed model of the PHIL platform is able to replicate the angle difference between the PV inverter current and the current measured on the RT simulation side. This causes a slight reduction in active power and a considerable difference in reactive power of 1.2 kVARs. A comparison between the simulation model and experimental results of a PHIL platform for a PV inverter operating with grid support functions is also presented.