Development of a Real-Time Simulation Platform for Power System Monitoring
With the aim at further advancing power system monitoring applications based on synchrophasor measurements and transitioning from ideas to innovation in this field, we have built a real-time simulation platform which incorporates real measurement devices, especially phasor measurement units (PMUs). This set up can validate the performance of the measurement devices and monitoring applications in a near in-field condition.
A real-time monitoring system that provides accurate and extensive measurements is a prerequisite to advanced ope- ration and control systems for tackling the new challenges in power systems. Especially, the use of PMUs, providing synchronized phasor measurements in real-time, is considered as key for state estimation, stability analysis, wide-area monitoring and control for future power systems.
In order to investigate advanced monitoring and control methodologies, we are designing and building a real-time experimental platform to emulate the measurement system of real-world power grid operation. This platform consists of three main parts: real-time power system simulation, synch- rophasor measurements and energy monitoring software. Real-time power system simulation is performed with the Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) to create different grid scenarios and conditions. Measurements are made available by RTDS via its analog output interface and its communication boards, using different standardized communication protocols such as DNP3.0 and IEC 61850 etc., as if the measurements were provided by in field devices.
The PMUs accept voltage and current measurements via the analog output of RTDS and provide phasor measure- ments synchronized by the GPS signal, as in the IEEE syn- chrophasor standards. Based on the open source software OpenPDC, Phasor data concentrator (PDC) and Super-PDC are implemented to enable aggregation and streaming of the phasor measurement data via an Ethernet network.
Regarding the monitoring software, a supervisor control and data acquisition (SCADA) system in combination with a database is set up to manage all the collected measu- rement data for the use by power system applications. Classical power measurements and synchrophasor measurements are saved into the database using an OPC server and the builtin database interface of OpenPDC, respectively. An online state estimator using the heterogeneous measurement data is implemented as the first monitoring application. As next step, this platform will be connected to the communication network emulator, to enable joint simu- lation of monitoring and communication systems