Applications Of A Real Time Digital Simulator In Power System Education And Research

Students often perceive power engineering as an old or established field.This perception lies in the inability to show abstract concepts and new control technologies using hardware in the classroom or laboratory.New ways to effectively present the novel power system operation and control concepts are needed.Real Time Modeling and Simulation (RTMS) can be used as an approach for enhancing power engineering education and research.RTMS gives students and researchers the opportunity to witness first hand how a moderately large power system behaves and can be used to demonstrate modeling, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) concepts, system disturbances of various types, and proper recovery actions, as well as to explain complex power system concepts.The Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) is an effective tool for modeling and simulation of power and control systems.RTDS hardware employs high-speed DSP (digital signal processor) chips, operating in parallel, to compute simulation results with simulation step sizes as small as two microseconds.This paper discusses projects and activities used in both teaching and research activities to provide exposure of the Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) for power system applications.