A Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Setup for Testing Distributed Series Reactors

This paper presents an experimental setup for testing Distributed Series Reactors (DSRs) in a low voltage test environment. The overall testbed consists of a Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) setup where three commercial DSRs are tested on a simulated 110 kV network. These devices can inject an orthogonal voltage into a power line to increase the line’s series reactance thus reducing the line current. The network is simulated on a commercial Real-time Simulator (RTS). Power Amplifiers (PAs) emulate the connection points between the DSRs and the simulated network. The implemented testbed is designed for testing DSRs with high current ratings close to typical 110 kV networks operating points. Furthermore, the testbed can be easily rearranged to test the DSRs under diverse configurations. The selected configurations permit an adequate test capability even with a limited number of DSR modules.