Low cost laboratory micro-grid hardware and control for electrical power systems teaching

Abstract

There is a growing trend within education establishments to teach electrical power system theory within lectures and back this up with software simulation laboratory sessions. This allows the courses to be taught at a lower cost than if real hardware was implemented. However, the students that are graduating from these programs are missing out on the opportunity to learn about real equipment and issues such as health and safety of voltages above 50V, mismatching component sizes and accuracy. Bespoke electrical power systems teaching equipment is expensive to buy. This paper details a low cost hardware setup that can be used to enforce electrical power system theory. The proposed equipment employs real off-the shelf equipment with some interfacing units which can be reproduced by laboratory technicians to enhance the student learning experience by offering students experience of real machines operating on an electrical power systems network.

Line Impedance Emulator: Modeling, Control Design, Simulation and Experimental Validation

“…Nowadays, with the tremendous increase of distributed energy generation (DEG), the concept of power quality (PQ) has become a growing concern for grid operators around the world [1][2][3][4]. Many research teams working on this topic are developing small or large-scale DEG laboratories (Figure 1) [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] as well as algorithms for critical situations is the grid emulator. This grid emulator is also used to confirm the compliance with standards and different grid codes [10][11][12][13].…”