Real-time and synchronous simulation in microgrid control center

Developing microgrids is an efficient approach to increasing the penetration of distributed generation (e.g., gas-turbine, wind turbine and photovoltaic power, etc.) in a power system. A microgrid can be operated by centralized control, autonomous control or multi-agents. Among all, a control center can provide a more reliable operation using many experiences related to traditional industrial power systems with SCADA. The autonomous control and multi-agent system relies on mutual interaction of power electronics and computer environment. To increase the performance of centralized control in a microgrid, a method to integrate a real-time simulator with a server PC using synchronous simulation technique is addressed in this paper. The real-time simulator, namely eMegaSim (RT-Lab), performs dynamic time-domain simulations while the server PC conducts static simulations (e.g., power flow and VAR control, etc.). Synchronous data links are used to enable communication between the eMegaSim and server PC. The simulation results obtained by a microgrid test bed confirm the applicability of the proposed method.