Community Microgrid Controller Evaluation using
Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed
Qian Long, Yuhua Du, Jian Lu, David Lubkeman,
Srdjan Lukic, Ning Lu
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
NSF FREEDM Systems Center
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC, USA
{qlong2, ydu7, jlu18, dllubkem, smlukic, nlu2}@ncsu.edu
Abstract — This paper introduces a controller hardware-in-the-
loop (HIL) microgrid testbed that is built to allow not only
dynamic validation, but performance evaluation of community
microgrid controllers. The performance metrics and evaluation
methodology are developed related to efficiency, greenhouse gas
(GHG) emission, economics and reliability. The real-time
community microgrid model is developed to adapt to extended
time-domain simulation that includes the voltage and frequency
dynamics of the microgrid components. A hybrid testbed
configuration is described to demonstrate the capability of
controller integration, testing automation and post-processing
analysis. Case studies based on an actual utility distribution
system are presented to demonstrate the functionality of the
microgrid testbed as well as the effectiveness of the evaluation
methodology.
Index Terms — hardware-in-the-loop, microgrid testbed,
community microgrid controller, performance evaluation
I. INTRODUCTION
With microgrid controller technology advancing towards
standardization [1] – [2], the testing of microgrid controllers is
becoming more and more critical. Various testing techniques
and methodologies have been proposed to verify and assess
microgrid control from multiple perspectives [3]. Software-
only simulation provides a flexible and cost-effective method
for testing, but its performance is inhibited by the difficulty of
achieving high simulation accuracy and low computational
costs at the same time. In addition, real-world challenges like
communication implementation and interoperability
coordination are hard to be fully replicated using simulation-
based testing. On the contrary, a full hardware test bench
provides the highest fidelity environment for evaluating
control, communication and interoperability of a microgrid,
such as the CERTS microgrid [4]. However, it usually involves
prohibitive costs, high risks and more space.
The Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed becomes a popular
alternative during the middle stage of microgrid testing recently
[3]. It permits the integration of controller boards (controller
978-1-5386-7138-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
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John S. Camilleri
Green Energy Corporation
Durham, NC, USA
jcamilleri@greenenergycorp.com
HIL) or physical devices (power HIL) with real-time
simulation, providing a more realistic testing environment. A
HIL microgrid system is presented in [5], composed of real-
time digital simulators, a prototype microgrid management
system and a communication emulator. It was designed to test
two-layer control algorithms for a microgrid pilot plant. A HIL
microgrid testbed with comprehensive multi-agent framework
is demonstrated in [6] for decentralized hierarchical and
distributed microgrid control. A controller HIL microgrid
testbed is introduced for commercial microgrid controller
evaluation in [7]. Actual distributed energy resources (DERs)
controllers are interfaced with real-time simulation, including
commercial genset controller and inverter controllers for solar
and energy storage. An RTDS-based HIL microgrid testbed
designed for assessing microgrid device-level and system-level
control is described in [8, 9]. The hybrid communication
between Microgrid Master Controller, SCADA and Intelligent
Electronic Device controller has been developed to support
microgrid time-critical operations like islanding and
resynchronization.
Compared to the existing HIL microgrid testbeds, the one
presented in this paper allows not only dynamic stability
validation, but also performance evaluation in extended time-
domain for the microgrid controller. The proposed HIL
microgrid testbed is introduced in Section II, which mainly
focuses on real-time modeling approach and testbed
configuration. Section III describes methodology for evaluating
the performance of microgrid controller with respect to
efficiency, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, economics and
reliability. Section IV presents case studies to demonstrate how
performance evaluation is done using the HIL testbed. Finally,
conclusions and next steps are given in Section V.
II. HIL MICROGRID TESTBED
A. Real-Time Community Microgrid Model
A community microgrid is defined in this paper as a
microgrid system that serves critical community assets by
integrating DERs owned by multiple parties across the

Figure 1. BESS model diagram
community with existing distribution circuits [10]. A typical
community microgrid includes major components such as
community loads, and community-level DERs, such as battery
energy storage systems (BESS), photovoltaic (PV) systems,
wind turbines (WT), combined heat and power (CHP) units,
and so on. This section presents the modeling approach for
BESS, PV systems, CHP units and community loads. The
models are developed under the consideration of including
certain features that are needed for performance evaluation.
1) BESS
In this testbed, the purposes of BESS modeling are 1) to
accommodate extended time-domain real-time testing of the
given microgrid controller; 2) to provide battery operation
states for microgrid controller evaluation. The BESS model is
composed of two parts as shown in Fig. 1: battery equivalent
circuit model and battery inverter model.
An equivalent circuit model based on lithium battery is
developed to capture battery operation states (State-of-Charge
(SOC), operation temperature, etc.) at the device-level [11].
The battery inverter is modeled as voltage control mode voltage
source converter (VCM-VSC) [12]. An average converter
model is used to provide enough fidelity on simulated converter
power flow dynamic with reduced computational complexity.
The local controller design of VCM-VSC, as shown in Fig. 1,
allows the BESS operates under either grid-forming and grid-
following operation mode as well as a smooth transition
between the two modes.
2) CHP Units
In this testbed, besides modeling the mechanical dynamics
of the CHP unit, fuel system, compressor and absorption chiller
(ABS) are also modeled to represent its thermal physics, as
shown in Fig. 2. Based on frequency feedback (ωr), frequency
reference (ωref) and power reference (Pref), the governor
provides fuel control command signal (Vce) to the fuel system.
The fuel system model dynamically captures the actual fuel
flow (Wf) required under the current rotor speed and ambient
temperature. The compressor & turbine model calculates the
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Figure 2. CHP model diagram
Figure 3. PV system model diagram
generated reusable waste heat (Qex) and mechanical torque
(Tm). Reusable waste heat drives ABS to supply building
thermal load when waste heat temperature is higher than a
certain threshold while mechanical torque serves as input power
to synchronous machine (SM). The detailed CHP model is
further described in [13].
Frequency-active power droop controller is used as the
turbine governor, which allows the CHP unit to operate under
either grid-connected or islanded mode without any need of
control mode change. Also, the controller can be easily
modified to allow isochronous operation of the CHP unit.
3) PV Systems
The PV system is modeled as three-phase current controlled
mode voltage source converter (CCM-VSC) and synchronized
with the grid using a phase-lock-loop (PLL) as presented in Fig.
3. The proposed PV system model operates in MPPT mode and
injects power that follows an irradiance profile. In islanded
operation, PV generation might be curtailed by the master
microgrid controller for stability purposes. One-second
resolution real-time PV profiles are utilized, which are
generated by interpolating real-world 5-minute data [14].
4) Community Loads
Community loads are classified into four criticality levels:
high, medium, low and optional. Load criticality levels are
considered during the modeling stage because these features
have an impact on reliability evaluation for critical loads, which
is of particular interest in the context of community microgrid.
Load breakers are added such that each load group only
responds to its own load modulation/shedding signals sent by
the microgrid controller. Load modeling includes the modeling
of both electric and thermal load. For electric load, a composite
ZIP model is used. Thermal load is only considered for building
load at the same location of the CHP unit and estimated using
the thermal-to-gross ratio obtained in [15]. Thermal load and
electric load profiles are obtained using (1) and (2).
 PT = min ( QABS , α Pload ) (1)
PE = Pload − PT (2)
where PT and PE are thermal and electric load being supplied.
Thermal load being supplied depends on ABS output QABS (in
the unit of kW) and the actual thermal load α Pload . Note α is
the estimated thermal-to-gross ratio and Pload is the gross
building load located at the same location of the CHP unit.
Load profiles are obtained using hourly load historical data
from a real-world utility database [10]. Load variation time
series are superimposed over hourly data and interpolation is
applied to generate 1-second real-time data. For testing
purposes, different load types are characterized with respect to
seasons (spring/summer/fall/winter) and load levels Figure 4. Controller HIL testbed configuration
(max/min/typical kWh). For example, a summer maximum
kWh day refers to the day with maximum daily energy
consumption between June and August.
B. Hybrid Testbed Configuration
The configuration of the controller HIL testbed, located at
NCSU NSF FREEDM Systems Center, is shown in Fig. 4.
OPAL-RT® OP5031 is used for microgrid real-time simulation.
A National Instrument® LabVIEW User Interface (UI) is used
as testbed console interface to support data acquisition,
parameter control and testing automation during real-time
testing.
DNP3 is used as the communication protocol to allow the
integration of the microgrid controller with the real-time
simulator. Fig. 5 shows the Odroid DNP3 gateway and the
Figure 5. DNP3 master and slave interface
DNP3 slave interface implemented in real-time microgrid
model. The Odroid unit, as the DNP3 master, obtains system
support various states of the system. The platform and APIs are
states as Analog Input and Binary Input from the microgrid
licensed under an AGP 3.0 and Apache License. It can be
testbed by either periodically polling the microgrid testbed or
accessed through a local human machine interface in the lab,
receiving unsolicited response from it. The microgrid testbed,
allowing testers to view all the microgrid operation and status.
as the DNP3 slave, is configured to report event data using
report by exception and receives control setpoints as Analog III. MICROGRID CONTROLLER EVALUATION
Output and Binary Output from the DNP3 master. All the data To evaluate any given microgrid controller design,
points are indexed in the DNP3 point list, which is implemented quantitative performance metrics are required to allow
in the communication interfaces for both DNP3 master and evaluation and comparison among different microgrid
DNP3 slave. Between microgrid controller and OPAL-RT® controller technology. Few papers have addressed the issue of
simulator, the Odroid unit translates DNP3 to a standard defining performance metrics for HIL testing of microgrid
messaging protocol for secure transport and communication controller. In this paper, performance metrics are defined
through public internet. related to efficiency, GHG emission and economics as well as
The hosted microgrid controller, namely GreenBus®, is an reliability.
open source telemetry control platform, deployed in a hosted The efficiency metric Eff considers losses on both utility
environment, and communicate with the network operation
center (NOC), which is set up using an Amazon® EC2-hosted side and DER side (i.e. inverter losses and CHP rejected heat).
service. This underlying communication leverages a standard It is defined for a period T using (3).
messaging protocols that enable best in practice security Etot _ loss
Eff = 1 − (3)
controls for authentication and authorization. The master Etot _ loss + Eload
microgrid controller consists of a number of services that were
where Eload is the energy of load consumption, including both
built on top of the GreenBus® platform using application
programming interfaces. These services include load thermal load and electric load. Etot _ loss is the total energy loss.
forecasting, energy storage optimization based on cost Grid loss involves distribution network loss plus losses from
equations, 48 hour predictive scheduling, control algorithms for generation and transmission. PV system loss is considered as
islanding and resynchronization, and other algorithms to PV inverter loss, using the difference between PV DC energy

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and PV AC energy output. CHP loss is obtained using input fuel
minus electric/thermal output in the units of kWh. The BESS
losses EBESS _ loss is calculated using (4) given the measurement
of BESS SOC and battery inverter AC power output.
EBESS _ loss = ΔSOC × kWhcap −  PBESS dt (4)
t∈T

where ΔSOC is the change between the starting SOC and the
ending SOC over a period T. Note kWhcap is the kWh capacity
of BESS. PBESS is the BESS discharging/charging rate in unit of
kW. The BESS loss term includes both battery inverter
operating losses and internal resistor energy losses.
Based on the fact that, for a microgrid, GHG emission is
mainly generated due to the utilization of CHP and electricity
purchase from utility grid, microgrid average emission factor
AEF can be defined over a period T using (5):
EM grid + EM CHP
AEF = (5) Figure 6. Community microgrid reliability evaluation
E grid + EPV + EBESS + ECHP
where EM grid is the GHG emission incurred by energy import
from utility grid, and EM CHP is the GHG emission caused by
fuel burning in CHP unit. Egrid , EPV , EBESS , ECHP are energy
production over a period T from utility grid, PV systems, BESS
and CHP unit, respectively.
Microgrid cost saving is defined over a period T in (6)
considering the difference between energy cost by only
purchasing utility electricity (baseline case) and the one by
purchasing utility electricity plus utilizing microgrid DERs
(microgrid case).
Savings = Cbase − C MG
  (6)
=  WMPt × E grid
base
, t −   WMPt × E grid ,t +  C fuel , t × ECHP , t 
t∈T  t∈T t∈T 
where Cbase is the cost of supplying microgrid load in baseline
case. C MG is the cost of supplying microgrid load in microgrid
case and contains the cost of energy imports from utility grid
and CHP fuel purchase. WMPt is the wholesale market price at
base
hour t and C fuel ,t is the fuel price at hour t. E grid , t is the energy

production from grid at hour t in baseline case while E grid ,t is

the energy production from grid at hour t in microgrid case.
ECHP,t is the CHP energy production at hour t.
SAIDI has been widely used to report the duration of
outages of distribution systems and is used here as the metric to
evaluate microgrid reliability. A series of HIL test scenarios
need to be done before the SAIDI can be calculated, and
evaluation methodology is shown in the following Fig. 6.
The test scenarios can be determined by selecting the most
common fault locations based on historical outage data. For
each scenario, depending on fault locations, the microgrid will
follow different post-fault operations. If there are extra
overcurrent protection devices like reclosers or fuses in the
microgrid, these devices will be coordinated to guarantee the
smallest number of interrupted customers. Note that if the
microgrid transitions to islanded mode, the controller will be
Figure 7. Community microgrid one-line diagram
evaluated based on how many loads are shed and whether BESS
SOC is sustained for an islanded operation until the mean time
to repair (MTTR) elapses.
IV. CASE STUDIES
Two case studies are shown in this section to present testing
results and performance analysis: 1) grid-connected energy
management for and 2) reliability evaluation. Fig. 7 shows the
13.2 kV/480V community microgrid model in real-time
simulation. It is connected to the local distribution system via a

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 TABLE I. MICROGRID RESOURCES AND LOAD CONFIGURATION

Microgrid Resources and Loads

Generation PV BESS NG-CHP Load
kW/kVA 248 (70-
500/625 165/250 755 at peak
Capacity ton ABS)
Microgrid Load Criticality
Load
High Medium Low Optional
Criticality
Load
L1-L4 L5 None L6-L10
Group
PCC head breaker and a PCC tail breaker. Those breakers are
normally closed in grid-connected mode and are tripped when
the microgrid transitions to islanded mode. The information on
microgrid resources and loads is shown in Table I.
A. Grid-Connected Energy Management
The objective of this test is to evaluate the performance of
microgrid controller optimal BESS dispatch during grid-
connected operation. The dispatch algorithm is based on a
(a)
multi-objective optimization accounting for efficiency,
economics and environmental impacts utilizing load and
renewable forecast. The input to the testbed are load profiles
and PV renewable profiles representing a summer maximum
kWh day. Information such as wholesale market price,
simulation time and initial system states are used for initializing
the microgrid controller.
Fig. 8(a) shows the dispatch schedule from the microgrid
controller based on a 24-hour real-time test. Note that the data
is averaged to hourly data for post-processing analysis. In terms
of BESS and grid power, positive (negative) means discharge
(charge) and energy import to microgrid (energy export from
microgrid), respectively. The BESS is charged at night during
a low-price period to 80% SOC, and is discharged from 14:00
to 17:00 in order to limit power import from utility grid during
high wholesale price period. Fig. 8(b) shows BESS operation is
close to SOC neutral at the end of the day, indicating a
sustainable energy management for the BESS. (b)
Fig. 8(b) also shows microgrid efficiency and emission are Figure 8. Summer maximum kWh day: (a) Grid-connected dispatch schedule
dynamically captured using definitions in (3-5). Since these (b) BESS SOC (top) and efficiency & GHG emission (bottom)
metrics are defined over a period, they can adapt to analysis in
any time domain. The daily performance metrics are TABLE II. PERFORMANCE SUMMARY FOR SUMMER MAXIMUM KWH DAY
summarized in Table II for the above grid-connected energy
management test. It shows that the tested microgrid controller Improvement
Baseline Microgrid
Rate
is able to provide improved system efficiency, emissions and
Efficiency (%) 40.00 48.32 20.79%
economics. Note that in cases of extended time-domain
Total GHG Emission
evaluation, PV and load characterization are needed to shorten (kg)
6307.74 4266.88 32.35%
real-time testing duration, and linear regression techniques are Average Emission Factor
required for extrapolation analysis [10]. 0.5040 0.3409 32.35%
(kg/kWh)
B. Reliability Evaluation Microgrid Total Cost
471.6
Savings ($)
Four locations are chosen as the most common fault and voltage regulation. Fig. 10 shows that, when the fault
locations as shown in Fig. 7, based on a six-year historical happens at 5:34 AM, load shedding is triggered right away.
utility outage map. Each fault scenario is tested in the HIL Note that this is initiated by microgrid controller based on PV
testbed and the reliability metrics are summarized in Table III and load forecast. The microgrid controller only keeps high
with critical loads being highlighted. critical loads online and dispatches CHP for the purpose of
For fault scenario 1 (F1), the microgrid goes to islanded maintaining BESS SOC. Since the BESS SOC is maintained
operation and the BESS acts as the master unit for frequency for 4 hours (MTTR for overhead), the system is connected back
to the grid and restores the interrupted load once the MTTP

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 TABLE III. MICROGRID RELIABILITY METRICS SUMMARY
Fault Number of Shutdown Number of Number of Number of High Number of High
Location Events Period (hrs) Customers Customers Not Critical Customer Critical Customer
(counts/year) Served Served Served Not Served
1 0.652 3 32 18 32 0
2 0.054 4 16 34 16 16
3 0.017 4 16 34 16 16
4 0.027 4 35 15 29 3
For All Loads For Critical Loads
SAIDI (min/customer/year)
55.7 9.1

This paper is based on work supported by Microgrid

Figure 10. Fault scenario 1: islanded dispatch schedule (top) and BESS SOC
(bottom)
elapses. If BESS SOC is beyond a permissible range during the
MTTR period, the system will go to blackout and shuts down
all the loads. For fault scenario 2 and 3 (F2 and F3), the
microgrid goes through similar post-fault operation except PCC
head breaker and internal recloser are both open to isolate fault.
L2 and L3 are interrupted for the whole MTTR period. In fault
scenario 4 (F4), the nearest fuse to the fault blows and L1, L6
and L7 are interrupted. It is worth noting that the baseline
SAIDI for the distribution circuit is around 176
min/customer/year and the microgrid controller is proven to be
effective in enhancing system reliability.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a controller HIL microgrid testbed is
introduced and a hybrid testbed configuration is presented. The
real-time models being developed include certain features for
facilitating performance evaluation of community microgrid
controllers. The designed metrics are able to benchmark the
controller performance related to efficiency, GHG emission,
economics and reliability, and can be applied for extended time-
domain analysis, such as yearly evaluation. Next steps will
include the development of a distribution system testbed with
multiple microgrids to support the evaluation of distribution-
level control algorithms.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy under Award
Number DE-OE0000734.
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