Study Case: D-STATCOM in Low-Cost Hardware in the Loop for Voltage Sag Mitigation

This paper is to study a Distributed Static Compensator (D-STATCOM) for voltage sag mitigation using a low-cost microcontroller in hardware in the loop (HIL) application. A framework of HIL-Matlab-Simulink simulation is developed using Raspberry Pi (RPi) and Arduino with a combination of Proportional Integral (PI) control for mitigating the voltage sag due to sudden change of load. The simulation results are presented in both offline and online modes. During the offline mode, the D-STATCOM is able to correct the voltage sag from 0.7 (p.u) to 1.0 (p.u) when the fault happens by injecting the current using the PI control strategy. As for online modes using the HIL platform, the voltage sag has also been mitigated with less response on the time response due to low bit design in the HIL, which currently is about a 3-bit model. In the meantime, the HIL system can be developed using a low-cost microcontroller as a learning process to the researchers before actual HIL is applied, which required more complicated signal processing configurations.