Design considerations and test setup assessment for power hardware in the loop testing

Power Hardware in the Loop (PHIL) simulations have recently been developed as a substitution for traditional methods of testing and analyzing real and physical electric power apparatus, especially power electronic based devices. However, due to some inherent characteristics of the PHIL test setup — such as use of power amplifiers, software/hardware interfaces, and real time simulations — there are certain operating constraints and implementation challenges that need to be considered and incorporated in the design. This work provides an overview of design and implementation of a PHIL platform for electrical power system testing. A frequency-domain stability analysis and a time-domain accuracy assessment of several PHIL test setups using different approaches have been presented. PHIL simulation and experimental results have been provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and functionality of each approach.