An approach for real-time simulation of electric drives

This paper investigates simulation techniques which differ widely from those actually used in real-time simulation of large power systems. The objective is to simulate electric drives in real-time, in order to provide drive designers with a tool which would allow them to design and prototype the controller stage of high power drives without actually needing the cumbersome power source, converter and machine. The fundamental differences between the simulation of drives and large power systems are identified. This motivates investigation of a modeling technique based on the state variable approach (SVA). A recent integration algorithm is then proposed to solve the state space equations. Off-line results of a case study are presented, after which limitations and applicability of this method are presented and implementation issues on a multiprocessor computer are discussed.