The professor of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NJUPT) wants to build a microgrid lab to simulate the microgrid running under both the islanded and grid-connected mode. Also, the system need to connect to the physical solar power and wind power system to form a digital-physical simulation platform. And the whole platform is expected to be open and expansible. The platform should be useful for both the research and teaching of the renewable energy microgrid.

Microgrid System Topology

The microgrid topology is shown as below:

The microgrid system includes the distributed renewable energy systems such as solar power, PMSG, and the VRB energy storage system. The VRB energy storage system stores the energy during the grid connected mode and provides the power support for the islanded microgrid. The system load includes ordinal residential load and electric vehicle charging load etc.

Under the grid-connected mode, users can enable the energy storage, photovoltaic and wind turbine, they can observe the behaviors of each system, such as the MPPT(the maximum powerpoint tracking) of PV system and wind power system.

Under the islanded mode, users can research how the microgrid system maintains the frequency and voltage stability with the support of the energy storage system. When the controller of energy storage system stabilizes microgrid frequency around 50Hz, the active synchronization function will synchronize the phase of microgrid to that of the grid, the phase synchronization enables the microgrid and power grid smoothly reconnection.

Real-time Simulation based on StarSim and PXI

In order to combine physical devices and the simulator together, the system uses NI DAQ hardware to acquire data from the real solar power and wind power system and transfer the data to the simulator. The whole system structure is shown below:

The real hardware photo is shown as below:

Summary

The StarSim microgrid system model includes various renewable energy systems, the simulator and the physical PV system and wind power system forms a digital-physical co-simulation platform. The whole microgrid simulation laboratory is useful in the display, control, research and teaching of the microgrid.

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