A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed to evaluate the impact of the insertion and control of distributed generating sources

Smart Grids is a modern concept of electric power network that aims with its infrastructure to improve efficiency, reliability and safety through automated control and modern communication technologies. In smart grids, more and more sources of renewable energy, photovoltaic, wind, biomass, etc., will be located on the side of stakeholders (distributed generation), due to environmental concerns and financial advantages. In addition, the generation of energy near the places where it is consumed, allows to reduce significantly the losses in the transmission lines associated with the power supply and to significantly relieve the congestion due to the limited capacity of these networks. This work presents a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) real-time simulator testbed using the emulator OP5707(1), from OPAL-RT Technologies, with a digital signal processor (DSP) board TivaC(2) TM4C1294NCPDT, from Texas Instruments. This testbed makes possible to evaluate the impact of the control of the distributed generation (DG) sources in the electrical power grid. Different analyzes can be carried out using different inputs and outputs for the most diverse operational possibilities of the DG system under study. Experimental results are presented demonstrating the feasibility of the developed testbed.