Investigating the Impact of Sensor Placement on the Stability of Power Hardware-in-the-Loop with a Grid-Following Inverter as Hardware-of-Interest

Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) is a fidelitous and reliable testing approach to evaluate the integration of emerging power technologies such as renewable resources in the power grid. However, when integrating the hardware-of-interest (HoI) with an emulated grid, insufficient prior knowledge about the HoI and transfer latencies in a PHIL setup can lead to loop instability, potentially resulting in hardware damage. Therefore, analyzing the loop stability before performing experiments is crucial. This paper approaches the impedance-based method to analyze the stability of a PHIL when testing a three-phase grid-following inverter with an LCL filter. The contribution lies in examining the impact of current and voltage sensor placement on the PHIL stability in four different scenarios: two for current and the other two for voltage sensor within the LCL filter. The results are presented and validated through time and frequency responses using Simulink/MATLAB.