Control system testing in electricity market places

The deregulation of the electricity markets and the inherent introduction of competitive forces has in many ways led to changing attitudes among utilities. In their strive to increase competitiveness, utilities have begun to explore ways to operate power systems in the most economic manner and also have to ensure the requested degree of quality. As a consequence and known as a fact, the utilities tend to push further the operating limits of the currently existing network infrastructure. In this context power system control plays an important role. In order to prevent blackouts and to maintain security margins under heavily loaded conditions, it is of utmost importance that control systems be optimized and function correctly. This makes it in turn necessary to test the control systems in a reliable and accurate manner. A method which is ideally suited for the testing of the control systems was developed and is discussed in this paper. It is based on the use of a real time digital simulator. A main feature of the method is the possibility to connect real physical control equipment to the simulator. In a case study, a real voltage regulator was tested. The test setup and the results are presented.