Hardware-in-the-Loop Use Cases for Synchrophasor Applications

This paper presents use cases for applying Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation in the development, testing and validation of PMU devices and synchrophasor-based applications. The use cases include PMU compliance testing, Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) systems testing, as well as vulnerability studies involving cyber-attacks and GPS spoofing. Real-Time Simulators (RTS) provide powerful system modeling capabilities and versatile interfaces with hardware devices and communication networks. Through the use cases, the RTS has been proven to be a useful tool for testing synchrophasor-based applications. In the paper, typical testing architectures and the advantages of using HIL are discussed.