Hierarchical Modeling Scheme for High-Speed Electromagnetic Transient Simulations of Power Electronic Transformers

The extensive application of the power electronic transformers (PETs) in power systems poses a challenge as the accurate and high-speed electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation of PET has been a critical issue. The computational time of the detailed EMT simulation of PET on EMT programs is unacceptable due to the large electrical node count, microsecond-range simulation steps, and high switching frequency of the devices and transformers. This article proposes a hierarchical modeling scheme for PET. Unlike the existing modeling methods, the proposed technique recursively decreases the dimension order of the admittance matrix to obtain the generalized Norton equivalent of each phase leg. The final admittance matrix overlaid onto the external system admittance matrix has a dimension order of magnitude remarkably smaller than that of the unreduced structure. By comparison with a detailed EMT model of a medium-voltage dc system, the performance of the proposed scheme has been assessed in PSCAD/EMTDC under various working conditions. With negligible loss of accuracy, approximately one to two orders of magnitude speedup over a straightforward EMT program is achieved.