Converter-Based Supercapacitor Emulator for Photovoltaic Applications

As the utilization of supercapacitors (SCs) in power system applications continues to increase, it is important to observe their behavior under transient and long-term operations to understand their impact on power grids. A real-time reconfigurable hardware testbed (HTB) is a power network emulator that provides flexibility in studying various power system scenarios. This work presents an emulation of a SC for a photovoltaic (PV) system on the HTB platform such that its dynamic behavior during power system scenarios can be observed. The developed emulator on the HTB is verified by comparing the emulation results with the model developed in MATLAB/Simulink. An improvement of grid frequency support control is proposed to enable fast-frequency recovery service provided by a grid-connected PV with SC system. The experimental results of the emulator are consistent with the simulation results under grid support scenarios. This SC emulator can potentially be used for various power system scenarios supporting other research in addition to the PV applications presented in this article.