Abstract
When the behavior of actual equipment, such as protection relays is needed to be observed, studied, and/or controlled in a complex power system, real-time digital simulators can be employed in order to provide a safe, accurate and efficient environment for researchers. OPAL-RT is one of the world leaders in the development of PC/FPGA based real-time digital simulators. An OPAL-RT simulator (RT-LAB) includes multi-processor units as well as multiple analog and digital input/output channels in order to provide the required connections between simulated grids with external hardware(s) for the purpose of hardware-in-the-loop testing. RT-LAB can simulate power grids under different simulation platforms. Using eMEGAsim, simulations under MATLAB/Simulink/SimPowerSystems can be transformed, compiled and executed in RT-LAB. Additionally, OPAL-RT has another simulation environment under a package called HYPERsim, which has been optimized for simulating larger systems with limited resources. The goal of this project is to investigate both of the above simulation platforms (eMEGAsim and HYPERsim) for the purpose of testing protection relays. This project will investigate instantaneous behavior of the SEL 351S overcurrent protection relay under high penetration of distributed generations. While previous research has indicated desensitization of “simulated” relays under high penetration of distributed generations, this project will investigate such phenomena using “actual” relays. The simulations are performed using MATLAB/Simulink/SimPowerSystems and HYPERsim. The IEEE 13-bus test feeder system has been considered as a base model and has been further modified and studied. Relay desensitization phenomena has been investigated and verified using actual SEL 351S relay in the loop with modeled system in HYPERsim and eMEGAsim.