A Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Smart Inverter Testing Facility

This paper describes the authors' experience in the implementation of a Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) laboratory facility designed to test smart inverters. PHIL testing offers significant advantages over traditional testing methods, such as purely simulated or hardware-only testing. This work aims to leverage such advantages and showcase a PHIL test bed designed to validate the cyber-and-physical performance of a 150kW power inverter under various operating conditions. The proposed PHIL laboratory facility incorporates essential equipment, including a 15kVA bi-directional power amplifier, a PV emulator, power supplies, a grid transformer, and PQ meters. By carefully selecting and configuring this equipment, the experimental setup closely resembles real-world implementation conditions, providing reliable and accurate testing results.