Evaluation of Different Waterway Modelling Techniques for Real Time Digital Simulator Applications

Increasing share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the power systems leads to further need of energy storage systems. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) has the largest capacity among various energy storage systems in the power system globally. In this paper, due to the significant effect of waterway on the transient and dynamic behavior of hydropower plants specifically PSH, several well-known modelling techniques of waterway/penstock for using in the real time digital simulator (RTDS) e.g. dSpace–SCALEXIO, are presented and discussed. RTDS is the intelligent brain of the advanced laboratory setup entitled power hardware in the loop (PHIL) system that is an extremely advantageous laboratory equipment for power system studies and testing hardware and control methodologies in emulated conditions. Results demonstrate that adequate modelling technique should be selected according to the goal and prospect of the research. Furthermore, considering the increase amount of variable speed pumped storage units in recent years and future plans, this paper and its result assist researchers to select a proper modelling technique of waterway for implementing RDTS to model variable speed PSH units in the power system studies.