2154
4, NOVEMBER 2014
Development of a Universal Platform for Hardware
In-the-Loop Testing of Microgrids
Jing Wang, Student Member, IEEE, Yulun Song, Wendong Li, Ji Guo, and Antonello Monti, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—The operation of a microgrid becomes significantly
complex with the high penetration of distributed energy resources
(DERs), demand-side management, market operation, and dis-
connection and reconnection to the utility grid. Therefore, devel-
opment of advanced tools/platforms for testing operation and
control of microgrid has attracted more and more attention
nowadays. The current literature reveals that the microgrid’s
control and management are designed to be tested either in a
numerical simulation approach, or only under a specific hard-
ware device/experiment environment; they do not deal with a
comprehensive platform capable of easily executing very com-
plex applications built by composing required functionalities in
a standardized, easy-to-use, and well-defined way. To address the
problem of limited testing functions of existing tools/platforms, a
hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) approach, in particular combining a
power-HIL (PHIL) and a signal-HIL (SHIL), is proposed in this
paper. Such an approach is suitable for testing the system-level
controller energy management systems (EMSs) and hardware con-
trollers at signal level, as well as hardware devices like power
converters at power level. Hence, this platform is designed for flex-
ibility and universality. The HIL platform is presented in this work
and its performance is demonstrated in a sample application.
Index Terms—Energy management system (EMS), hardware
in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, microgrid.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A MICROGRID is a part of an electrical grid with elements
of distributed energy resource (DERs), power electron-
ics devices, distributed energy storage systems, and local loads
which can work both in grid-connected mode and stand-alone
mode [1]–[3]. The operation of a microgrid system becomes
significantly complex with the high penetration of DERs,
demand-side management, market participation, disconnection,
and reconnection to the utility grid [2]. Therefore, development
of tools/platforms for testing operation and control of micro-
grids has attracted more and more attention nowadays [3].
Substantial works on the control and operational issues
of microgrid are available in the literature, with focus on
energy management, control of DERs, field tests, and labora-
tory experiments. An intelligent energy management system
(EMS) was implemented to obtain economic operation and deal
Manuscript received November 01, 2013; revised March 29, 2014 and June
06, 2014; accepted July 29, 2014. Date of publication August 21, 2014; date of
current version November 04, 2014. Paper no. TII-13-0846.
The authors are with the Institute for Automation of Complex
Power Systems, E.ON Energy Research Center, Rheinish-Westfälishce
Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
(e-mail: jwang@eonerc.rwth-aachen.de; ysong@eonerc.rwth-aachen.de; wli@
eonerc.rwth-aachen.de; jguo@eonerc.rwth-aachen.de; amonti@eonerc.rwth-
aachen.de).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TII.2014.2349271
1551-3203 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO.
with indeterminacy of uncontrollable DER units [1]–[3]. An
EMS for microgrid operation was reported in [4] and [5] to
deal with microgrid stability issues based on different control
strategies and analysis approaches. An EMS aiming to solve
the energy imbalance problem is developed in [6]–[8] based on
a new prediction strategy to forecast the load and generation.
All these works discussed above share a common feature:
validation, demonstrations, and tests are all performed with
numerical simulation. As stated in [9], results of the numeri-
cal simulation approach may not be reliable, as detailed models
of the components are often unavailable or insufficient, as the
synthesis and validation of the models is challenging. There-
fore, further validation of works tested beyond the numerical
simulation method is necessary for technology de-risking prior
deployment.
Various research works regarding control of inverter-
interfaced DERs have been developed and tested in hardware
devices in order to verify the practical applications. As reported
in [10]–[13], control algorithms for power sharing, inverter out-
put impedance reduction, grid impedance estimation, and grid
power quality improvements are tested on a hardware controller
and voltage-source inverters, in particular, the utility grid is rep-
resented by programmable power supply [13].
Field tests have been developed for testing the EMS of
a microgrid to achieve online operation of the microgrid in
standalone conditions [1]. An EMS for a microgrid is imple-
mented and tested via a communication infrastructure based
on RS-485 in [14] and [15], and an experimental platform
based on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is
developed in [16] to test the management of a hydrogen-based
microgrid. A hardware in-the-loop (HIL) simulation platform
is proposed in [17], and a digital signal processor (DSP) is
embedded as a communication interface between real time
digital simulator (RTDS) and the EMS man–machine interface
(MMI) via RS-485. An emulated laboratory microgrid is
developed to test EMS in [18] and [19], however, there is no
communication between the EMS and microgrid components,
which therefore limits the applications in real life.
The literature discussed above reveals that the microgrid’s
control and management systems are designed to be tested
either in a numerical simulation approach, or test only under
a specific device/experimental environment (i.e., power con-
verters, microcontroller, and platforms/tool for EMS). Instead,
a comprehensive platform would be necessary, featured with
easy execution of very complex applications, built by com-
posing functionalities in a standardized, easy-to-use, and well-
defined way. To address the problem of limited testing functions
of the existing tool/platform, a HIL approach that combines a
WANG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSAL PLATFORM FOR HIL TESTING 2155

power-HIL (PHIL) and a signal-HIL (SHIL), is proposed in

this work. This testing approach is suitable for both signal-level
test of system-level controller EMS, hardware controllers, and
power-level test of devices, like power converters. A platform
with these features achieves the flexibility and universality for
testing the operation and control of a microgrid.
The HIL simulation (emulation) is a technique used to
test a physical device (or system of devices) embedded in
the real-time simulation system [9]. This simulation approach
combines the advantages of complete numerical simulation
method and complete hardware field test, and has sev-
eral benefits like real-time simulation, short build-up time,
capable of repeatability, relatively low cost, and reliable
results [14].
A SHIL is mainly used to test the controller of a compo-
Fig. 1. Concept of a universal HIL platform.
nent/system, and the rest of the system is modeled in a real-
time simulator. In this case, the controller under test (CUT) is
coupled via signals to the system modeled in real-time simu-
lator [20], no conservation of energy is enforced. Instead the
power HIL, PHIL, integrates power hardware into the simu-
lation, hence it requires an interface that absorbs/sinks actual
power, in a way that the conservation of energy is enforced at
this interface between the rest of the simulated system and the
hardware under test (HUT) [20].
As effective solutions for fast prototyping, the SHIL and
PHIL have been widely applied in various engineering areas
such as aerospace and automotive industry, robotics, power sys-
tem, and railway system [17]. In particular, traditional appli-
cations in power system are closed-loop testing of controllers
for high-voltage direct current (HVDC) system, shunted self-
commutated static var compensators (STACOM), protective
relays [21]–[23]. Nowadays, more and more test setups apply-
ing SHIL and PHIL simulations have been developed to sup-
port the development of renewable energy technology, mainly
focusing on photovoltaic [9], wind turbines [24], fuel cells [25],
and microgrid [14], [17]. Fig. 2. Examples of HIL platform testing different components. (a) Power HIL
test of HUT. (b) Signal HIL test of controller. (c) Signal HIL test of EMS.
(d) Power and Signal HIL test of HUT and EMS.
II. I NTEGRATED F RAMEWORK FOR HIL P LATFORM
The scheme of the universal HIL platform is shown in Fig. 1. load. Examples of different platform configurations for testing
The HIL platform comprises a communication interface, a real- different components in the microgrid are shown in Fig. 2.
time simulator and a power interface, and the system under As shown in Fig. 2(a), the testing of an individual photo-
test (SUT) is composed of HUT, CUT,, and system CUT. The voltaic (PV) inverter system is an example of HIL test of an
SUT includes components from hardware device to system- actual power device that involves only the power interface. The
level controller, therefore the platform requires corresponding aim of this test is to investigate the interactive dynamics (e.g.,
interfaces to link the SUT and the simulated models. The com- dynamic stability and performances) between the power device
munication interface has to be able to provide a common com- and simulated model in real-time simulator. The demonstration
munication connection for the system CUT, real-time simulator, of this application can be found in [9].
and CUT. The power interface is a high-power, high-bandwidth The testing of a digital controller shown in Fig. 2(b) is
power electronics amplifier, which enforces the real power vir- an example of HIL test of control performances (e.g., stabil-
tually exchanged between real-time simulator and the actual ity, robustness, and accuracy) of a controller. In this case, the
HUT [20]. DSP controller is the CUT, hardware devices (e.g., PV inverter
As illustrated in Fig. 1, the platform integrates signal-level system) are modeled in the real-time simulator, and the com-
and power-level HIL, and the individual components of each munication interface sends control commands (e.g., power ref-
level are presented in the dashed block in the figure. This erences and operating mode) to the DSP. The realization of
combination of SHIL and PHIL allows for the testing of this example is reported in [26], in which two DSP devices are
specific components as well as the complete microgrid system implemented to test the voltage-control algorithms of the DER
including, e.g., EMS, control devices, the DER unit, and the units in the microgrid.

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2156
The example presented in Fig. 2(c) allows for testing
real-time operation performance of system-level controller of
a microgrid system such as EMS, and the communication
interface supporting fast communication connection and large
amount of data transmission is crucial for this testing setup. The
validation of this HIL for EMS is carried out by testing a pilot
microgrid [17], however, the application of this work can be
improved by a high-speed and low-latency digital communica-
tion interface [28].
The examples above show the testing of individual compo-
nents, and the testing of two components are supported as well
by the HIL platform as shown in Fig. 2(d). This example of
test setup is necessary prior to carrying out the complete test as
shown in Fig. 1.
III. D ESIGN R EQUIREMENTS
To develop such a universal HIL platform, specific require-
ments for topology, signal scaling, bandwidth, and power
ratings of the interfaces as well as the requirements for model-
ing and simulation should be defined to guarantee its stability,
real-time simulation, flexibility, and extensibility. The design
requirements for each part of the HIL platform are described in
the following sections.
A. Modeling
In the HIL platform, all the components that are not in the
form of hardware have to be simulated in a real-time simulator.
The accuracy and simulation time step of the simulated mod-
els may differ strongly depending on the purpose of the testing.
For instance, if the influence of pulse width modulation (PWM)
techniques needs to be studied as shown in Fig. 2(b), a com-
plete inverter model including dc bus, full bridge inverter, and
LC/LCL filter should be built and run in a small-time step about
1 µs. When the focus is to test EMS as shown in Fig. 2(c), the
inverter model can be represented by an average model and run
in a large-time step such as 50 µs.
If an average model of power electronic converters is sim-
ulated while the current/voltage controller is embedded in a
microcontroller, then the sampling frequency for the digital
controller may be set equal to the two times of bandwidth of
the fastest control loop in the system (typically its the current
control loop). This enables the sampling of current that can be
effectively controlled, with no aliasing effects. The discretiza-
tion time step for the model should be adjusted accordingly
in order to accurately simulate the model behavior between
the samples. A value of 15 µs is quite representative but not
necessarily.
B. Simulation
In this integrated platform, the types of tested transients
are electromagnetic transients, therefore transient for testing
fault/protection is not studied. The simulated model must
be computed in hard real time in a real-time simulator
with hardware allowing the simulated model to receive/send
analog/digital (A/D) signals from/to external devices. By this
way, the real-time simulator is able to send the calculated
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2014
measurement signals of the simulated models to HUT, and
receive and implement the real-world control values obtained
from the HUT via the interface of actuators and sensors. In
addition to the A/D interfaces, the communication interface that
provides a real-time communication link to and from the sim-
ulator is required to support functions like data connection and
various communication protocols.
C. Power Interface
The power interface physically links a discrete time system
(simulated model) and a continuous time system (HUT) such
that the real power is virtually exchanged between the two sys-
tems. To guarantee the seamless operation between HUT and
real-time simulator, a high-power, high-bandwidth power elec-
tronic interface is used as an actuator to track the dynamic vari-
ations and enforce the conservation of energy at the interface
terminals. The power interface exchanges signal-level signals
(a few volt) with real-time simulator and power-level signals (a
few hundred volt) with HUT [9]. It consists of a power ampli-
fier which physically reconstructs a reference variable from the
real-time simulator (e.g., voltage and current) and applies it to
the HUT, and also a sensor which measures the output of the
HUT (e.g., current and voltage) and sends it back into the real-
time simulator [20], [37]. As the power interface reconstructs
voltage or current variable, the output filter should be able to
switch between LC and LCL filter accordingly. As the HUT
absorbs or sinks real power, the power interface must include
appropriate power application and conversion apparatuses to
support the bidirectional power flow [27].
The microgrid under test can be ac, dc, and hybrid micro-
grid. In particular, if hardware devices in dc microgrid are the
HUT then outputs (voltage and current) of HUT are dc vari-
ables. By using the full bridge converter, the power interface in
the platform can work both in dc and ac mode. Moreover, the
sensors for power interface should have enough bandwidth for
accurately measuring the dc variables.
Ideally, the power interface should have unitary gain with
infinitive bandwidth and no time delay to perfectly reconstruct
the reference signal [27], [37]. However, it is neither achiev-
able nor affordable. Since errors and delays caused by the
power interface such as quantization of A/D and D/A conver-
sion, saturation, sampling and elaboration time delay and har-
monics injections, the sensor’s time-delay and noise, additional
time-delay caused by real-time simulator may lead to accuracy
issues, or instability [37]. Thus, several interface algorithms are
reported in [27] to discuss the stability and accuracy issues of
PHIL simulations.
Regarding the power rating, topology, and bandwidth of the
power interface, these characteristics depend on the HUT, and
guidelines can be found in [9] and [27]. Besides the power
interface, a signal-level interface may be needed if the A/D
input/output (I/O) voltage levels of a real-time simulator are not
compatible with the CUT. Real-time simulators such as RTDS
have A/D I/O voltage levels within a range of −10 to +10 V,
which for example does not fit with a standard DSP (0–3.3/0–
5 V). Thus, a signal electrical interface has to be developed to
tune the voltage levels from ±10 to 0–3.3/0–5 V.
WANG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSAL PLATFORM FOR HIL TESTING 2157

D. Communication Interface
The inclusion of system-level controllers such as EMS into
the HIL simulations requires a common communication infras-
tructure for data transmission and information exchange among
different entities (e.g., simulated model, embedded microcon-
trollers, and EMS).
The requirements for the communication interface such as
delay and bandwidth are dependent on the update time of EMS
due to the constraints for real-time simulation. Once the update
time of EMS is fixed, the delay of the round trip signal via
communication interface should be at least smaller than the
update time of EMS. From stability point of view, the time
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the simulated microgrid.
delay should be minimized as much as possible to reduce the
time required for closing active and reactive power control loop, TABLE I
thereby the stabilization time for the complete system would be PARAMETERS OF M ICROGRID
shortened [3].
As the function of EMS is to monitor and control the opera-
tion of the complete microgrid in order to optimize the power
exchanged between the microgrid and the utility grid, the
update time of EMS is defined in terms of power level of DERs.
The bandwidth of power level reported in [36] is typically in the
range of 2–10 Hz so that the recommended update time of EMS
can be defined in the range of 100–500 ms.
There are large numbers of protocols for communications,
and exchanging power systems data between devices from dif-
ferent developers is always problematic when proprietary for-
mats are used. Standardization is the key for the advancement
of the connectivity and interoperability within a system. It is real-time simulator RTDS. The design and implementation of
necessary to define the data format in a unified and acceptable each part in this sample platform is discussed in this section.
way which meets the requirement of a widely used international
standard for power system automation in particular for micro-
grids or DERs. A. Simulated Microgrid in RTDS
The simulated microgrid in RTDS shown in Fig. 3 includes
E. System Controller one PV, one wind turbine, one diesel generator, one battery
energy storage system (BESS), and three loads. The DER units
The system controller is the implementation environment for
(PV, wind turbine, and BESS) working as current sources are
system-level controllers such as EMS which includes Ethernet
modeled by a generic dynamic model as described in [30] for
Interface, EMS algorithm, and MMI. In order to be universal,
dynamic behavior and stability analysis. The diesel generator
the data updating rate should be able to be modified according
model includes automatic voltage regulator and turbine gov-
to the applications (simulated system), communication delay,
ernor, and works as a voltage source (VF mode) when the
and EMS algorithm execution time. The format of the data sent
microgrid operates in islanding mode and current source (PQ
back should be consistent with the data format sent by the com-
mode) when the microgrid works in grid-connected mode. All
munication interface. Whatis more, the function of the black-
the components are simulated with a large-time step of 50 µs,
box testing should be possible in case the EMS algorithm is not
and the parameters can be found in Table I.
implemented in a given environment (e.g., LabVIEW) or the
The microgrid can work in both grid-connected and islanding
source code is not available.
modes. In this microgrid, each DER unit has its local controller,
which controls output power through regulating output cur-
rent, or forms the bus voltage by controlling voltage magnitude
IV. S AMPLE P LATFORM and frequency, and controls switching status. The control com-
Section II proposes an integrated framework for HIL plat- mands of real/reactive power set points, voltage/frequency set
form which is able to test individual components as well points and the commands to switch mode of operation/control
as a complete system. The realization of such HIL platform of DER units, loads, and microgrid are generated by the
is presented in this section as an example of application to EMS externally to the real-time simulation, and sent to RTDS
demonstrate the feasibility of the envisioned integrated frame- through the communication interface.
work. The configuration of the example platform is depicted in Data in RTDS can be exchanged with external devices in
Fig. 2(d). For this application, a high-performance communi- real time, mainly in three ways. Using A/D I/O board is a first
cation interface is developed to link the DUT, EMS, and the and immediate way to exchange signals between RTDS and

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2158
TABLE II
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN GTNET AND GTFPGA
external devices. Since the RTDS analog I/O boards connect via
optical fiber to an RTDS processor card, and the analog values
are in digital format while they are transferred over this fiber
[28], to build a direct interconnection to this Giga processor
card (GPC) would reduce the time for data transmission as well
as improve data precision. Thus, a second solution, a prototype
card Giga transceiver field program gate array (GTFPGA),
was developed to work as an interface to achieve the direct
interconnection to the GPC in RTDS. The third solution,
Giga transceiver network (GTNET) communication card can
support data exchange based on different network communi-
cation protocols. The second solution is the most flexible and
powerful one due to its availability to interact with GPC card
and capability of user-defined functions/applications [29]. As
the first solution does not support an open high-speed digital
communication link [28], only comparisons between GTNET
and GTFPGA are made and summarized in Table II. Besides
the advantageous listed in Table II, the hardware resources of
FPGA enables it as a solution for interfacing different entities
(e.g., simulated model, embedded microcontrollers, and EMS).
Therefore, GTFPGA is applied in this sample platform and the
complete platform.
B. Energy Management System
The EMS works as central controller of the microgrid to
supervise the control and operation of all the components in
the microgrid, such as connection/disconnection of DER units,
load shedding, and operating modes of the microgrid.
The EMS in this case study is PC-based and developed
in LabVIEW due to its advantages like easy-to-use, inte-
grated libraries and high reliability compared to other languages
C/C++/C#. The EMS is divided into four modules based on
the different functions, and the data flow between each mod-
ule is shown in Fig. 4. The detailed function of each module is
explained in the following sections.
1) Ethernet Interface: The Ethernet Client provides con-
nection for the EMS and communication interface to exchange
data through the Ethernet interface. The Ethernet Client is
implemented in LabVIEW design environment, which pro-
vides several easy-to-use Ethernet function blocks and there-
fore simplifies the development process. In order to satisfy
a broad application, this client supports both transfer control
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 4. Block diagram of EMS.
TABLE III
P ROTOCOL PARAMETERS
protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) protocols.
UDP protocol is adopted in this application due to its faster
transmission speed compared to TCP [33], thus achieving a
high-speed and real-time EMS.
Before starting the operation of the EMS, the user needs to
enable the function of the Ethernet Client by choosing the type
of protocol and inserting the corresponding settings as shown
in Table III.
The EMS monitoring and returning command data updating
rates can be defined by users in the “Acquire Data Block” in
LabVIEW. The example EMS acquires data from the commu-
nication interface every 100 ms, and sends the command data
back every 100 ms.
2) EMS Algorithm: The EMS algorithm includes two parts:
the economical optimization algorithm for scheduling output
and the technical control algorithm for correcting the scheduled
output and generating the optimized set points output. The con-
figuration diagram of the EMS algorithm is shown in Fig. 5.
3) User Interface: The user interface (UI) has a charac-
teristic of MMI, which displays all the measurement data in
microgrid, and the user can manually control the operation
of microgrid. The UI includes a monitoring panel, waveform
charts, and control methods. The monitoring panel displays the
topology of the microgrid and real-time measurements data.
The waveform charts show all the output active and reac-
tive power of the DER units, consumption of the loads, and
export/import power at PCC. The control method is designed
for the user to choose the operation manner of the microgrid:
manual or automatic. With manual manner, the user can set
the power setting points and switch status manually. As for the
WANG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSAL PLATFORM FOR HIL TESTING
Fig. 5. Configuration diagram of EMS algorithm module.
automatic manner, the EMS computes the power setting points,
and switch status based on the algorithm.
4) Data Storage: A data storage function is developed for
the purpose of post process and analysis. The saved control
commands data are stored in a buffer with fixed capacity, which
provides enough samplings for analysis. As the raw data is not
suitable for immediate usage, a data processing block is used to
process the data before saving them into text files.
5) Black-Box Testing: In EMS (LabVIEW), LabVIEW can
call external code in dynamic link library (DLL) or shared
libraries and code exposed through ActiveX or .NET interfaces
[39]. For example, an EMS algorithm programmed in C code
or other languages such as C++ and Python can be built as a
DLL and called using the call library function (CLF) Node in
LabVIEW [39]. If the source code is written in MATLAB as .m
file, it is possible to directly generate DLL file from .m file in
MATLAB using MATLAB Complier [45]. Since CLF Node has
some requirements on input/output data types of the DLL func-
tions, the data format returned by the functions in DLL and the
data format sent to DLL must fit the requirement of CLF Node.
In order to fit the requirements of CLF node, a “wrapper DLL”
block can be used to converter various data types to a more gen-
eral one (int, float, double, and struct) which can be accepted by
CLF node. Before calling the DLL file, the following informa-
tion must be known and set in the “Configure block” of the
CLF node 1) the data format returned by the function in DLL;
2) calling conventions of the functions in DLL; 3) the parame-
ters and the data type of the parameters in the DLL functions;
and 4) the directory of the DLL file .DLL files are already com-
piled, which means their source codes or “actual algorithms”
are not accessible or available. Therefore, using DLL files is a
practical method to do the black-box testing of the EMS algo-
rithm whose source code is not available.
C. Communication Interface
The communication interface is based on Xilinx ML507
evaluation board, which provides a path for high band-
width and low latency communication [28]. The Interface is
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2159
Fig. 6. Schemetic diagram of developed communication interface of the sample
HIL platform.
responsible for transferring monitoring data and control
commands between RTDS and PC-based EMS. The communi-
cation between communication interface and EMS is via Ether-
net cable, and between the communication interface and RTDS
is via fiber optics. It is worth to mention that the latency via
Ethernet is less influenced by the amount of transmitted data
compared to the mostly used RS-485 when data is transmitted
between EMS and the communication interface.
1) Configuration of the Communication Interface: The Xil-
inx ML507 evaluation board embeds two core components:
1) a Virtex 5 FPGA and 2) a PowerPC 440 microprocessor.
An Ethernet PHY transceiver is used for Ethernet Port with
three speed modes (10/100/1000 Mb/s), and 1000 Mb/s is used
to get the fastest transmission speed. The optical transceiver
(FTLF8519P2xNL) supports bi-directional high speed data
links at signaling rates up to 2.125 Gb/s via fiber optic cable.
These two communication bandwidths satisfy the bandwidth
requirements defined in Section III.
On this evaluation board, the Power PC microprocessor is a
functional complement to the FPGA. Based on the resources
of the FPGA, a high-speed communication interface linked to
external devices can be developed. However, it is complicated
to build data processing inside FPGA due to the hardware
description language design. With the help of the PowerPC
microprocessor, not only the data processing but also the con-
trol algorithm can be easily implemented using C program-
ming. The internal structure and components of the evaluation
board is presented in Fig. 8, and the principle of each part is
explained as follows.
2) Communication Application: As shown in Fig. 6, the
FPGA includes two semiconductor Intellectual Property cores
(IP cores): a customer IP core as fiber optic interface and an
IP XPS LL TEMAC Ethernet core as Ethernet interface. An IP
core is a reusable unit of logic cell or chip layout with electronic
design. The direct data exchange between these two cores is not
recommended since the data format and transmission speed of
fiber optic and Ethernet cable are totally different from each
other. Therefore, we use the PowerPC 440 as a bridge between
these two cores and use Xilinx 128-bit Processor Local Bus
(PLB V4.6) for the data exchange between PowerPC and the
IP cores. The PLB V4.6 is an internal bus of the communica-
tion interface which provides bus infrastructure for connecting
PowerPC 440 as PLB master and an optional number of IP
cores as PLB slaves into an overall PLB system.
2160 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2014

The Xilinx ML507 evaluation board is directly connected TABLE IV

with GPC card of RTDS through a fiber optic interconnection. MMXU DATA M ODEL
In order to encode and decode the optical signal, a “fiber
interface” module written in VHDL must be included in the
customer IP core design. This module supports bi-directional
transfer of up to 64 float or integer data in each direction per
simulation time step. Once the FPGA receives bitstream sent
from RTDS through optical fiber, the bitstream is first decoded
by the “fiber interface” into addresses and values. These val-
ues with various physic meanings (e.g., power, voltage, and fre-
quency) can be identified according to their addresses and then
be transferred through PLB V4.6 into the random access mem-
ory (RAM) of the PowerPC 440 for following computing and TABLE V
FSPT DATA M ODEL
processing. Similarly, when the FPGA sends data to the RTDS,
the values and the addresses are encoded by “fiber interface”
into optical bitstream. The information inside the bitstream can
then be extracted and identified by the GPC card of RTDS.
The communication between the evaluation board and EMS
is connected through the Ethernet cable and the data is trans-
ferred in the form of UDP sockets. UDP socket transmission
between FPGA and EMS is implemented by adding an IP
XPS LL TEMAC Ethernet core. TEMAC is an acronym for
Tri-Mode Ethernet Media Access Controller and it refers to
the three speed (10, 100, and 1000 Mb/s) capable Ethernet
MAC function available in this core. The UDP sockets need TABLE VI
to be transferred are built in PowerPC 440 and are then sent to XCBR DATA M ODEL
the Ethernet core by means of PLB V4.6. On the other hand, the
UDP sockets received by the Ethernet core, which includes the
command data from EMS, can also be transferred to PowerPC
via PLB for further processing and transmission.
3) Communication Data Models: IEC 61850 is the
key communication interface standard for power facilities.
Although it was developed for system interfaces between
power facilities for substation automation, its applications has
expanded rapidly [40]. Moreover, IEC 61850-90-5 also pro-
vides communication profile extensions to allow to route mes-
sages using UDP/IP. For this reason, we implemented the IEC
61850 standard in the communication interface between the
RTDS and the EMS.
We developed the IEC 61850 server and client program for
the communication interface. In this case, the FPGA board
acts as the server, and the EMS implemented based on Lab-
VIEW acts as the client. IEC 61850 supports various data mod-
els [41]. We use the data model MMXU for the transmission
of the measured value, choose FSPT for the reference value
of the loads and generators in the network, and use XCBR for
the control and monitoring of the circuit breakers. The MMXU
data model is usually used for measuring data description. The
active/reactive power information and the three-phase measured
data values can be directly mapped to the MMXU data field, as Fig. 7. Time delay of the sample platform.
shown in Table IV. As shown in Table V, FSPT is used for
receiving standard set-points, making some calculations with than this update rate for fulfilling the requirement of real-time
other standard parameters, and producing standard outputs [44], simulation. The time delays T1 , T3 , T5 , T7 , and T9 represent
and as shown in Table VI, mapping circuit breaker data in the processing time in the individual component in the sample plat-
XCBR data model is also a straightforward process. form, and T2 , T4 , T6 , and T8 denotes the time delay from/to
4) Test Result: Once the update rate in EMS is fixed (e.g., the communication interface. As T1 and T9 are 50 µs, and T2 ,
every 100 ms in the sample platform), the entire time delay T4 , T6 , and T8 are unknown but negligible due to the fast com-
of the round trip signal shown in Fig. 7 should be smaller munication link, the entire time delay is mainly caused by T3 ,

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WANG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSAL PLATFORM FOR HIL TESTING
TABLE VII
P OWER I NTERFACE S PECIFICATION [43]
T5 , and T7 . A simple test is repeatedly carried out to calculate
the average entire time delay by sending a switch signal from
RTDS to the communication interface, and then to the EMS.
Once the signal is received by the EMS, the EMS sends this
signal back to RTDS immediately. The entire time delay is in
the range of 1.6–2.2 ms, and the computed average entire delay
is 1.9 ms. Since the processing time of EMS T5 is rather small
in this test, that the approximated constraint of the processing
time of EMS algorithm is less than 98.1 ms. Violation of this
time constraint can be avoided by decreasing the update rate of
EMS in the communication interface.
D. Power Interface
The power interface is a three-phase ac/dc/ac converter, and
its specifications are summarized in Table VII. Since the power
interface is developed and tested in previous work, and the
detailed information can be found in [9] and [43], the descrip-
tion of the power interface will not be included in this paper.
V. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
The laboratory implementation of the sample platform
including EMS, the communication interface, the power inter-
face, HUT (load), and the simulated microgrid in RTDS is car-
ried out to verify the validity of the sample platform thus the
whole concept. Considering the focus of the work is the plat-
form rather than the EMS algorithm, a simple EMS algorithm
aiming to achieve the balance of generation and load is imple-
mented and tested. The test of round-trip signal delay is carried
out with the EMS algorithm many times and the average time
delay is around 80 ms. One test result is shown in Fig. 8 in
which “AB” represents the signal sent from RTDS and “AA”
is the signal received in RTDS. The round-trip delay is 81 ms,
which therefore denotes that the processing time of the EMS
algorithm satisfies the constraint of real-time operation.
A. Test of the Universal HIL Platform
As shown in Fig. 9, the power interface is a three-phase
ac/dc/ac converter rated at 25 kVA which is supplied from a
230 V bus. A three-phase resistor load serves as the HUT and
connects at the converter output. The EMS monitors and con-
trols the operating of the microgrid shown in Fig. 3, while the
HUT is load 3 (50 Ω/phase, nominal power 1 kW).
Fig. 10 shows the results of the test as displayed on the
UI waveform charts of the EMS. The initial operating con-
ditions are characterized as follows: microgrid works in grid-
connected mode and absorbs 13 kW + j2 kVar power from the
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2161
Fig. 8. Result of test of round-trip signal delay.
Fig. 9. Results of measurments of components of microgrid during operating
mode transition.
main grid; load 1 is 30 kW + j10 kVar; load 2 is 25 kW, load 3
is HUT 50 Ω; the PV generates 10 kW; the wind turbine gen-
erates 20 kW; the BESS generates 10 kW + j8 kVar; and the
diesel generator is 5 kW. During the whole operating time, the
three loads keep the same. At point A, the microgrid switches
to the islanding mode, in which there is no power exchange at
the PCC. The voltage (magnitude and frequency) at the micro-
grid main bus exhibits some transient, and the diesel generator
changes from constant power injection (PQ) mode to voltage
frequency (VF) control mode and slowly reaches the steady-
state. The production of the BESS is regulated smoothly to the
new reference sent by the EMS.
The PV and wind generate the same amount of power as in
the grid-connected mode, and active and reactive power exhibit
small transient, respectively. Small transients can be observed
from load 1 and 2, and a larger transient is shown in the real
load 3 which shows the real distorted power.
The microgrid operates stably in islanding mode for certain
time, and then reconnects to the main grid at the point B as
shown in Fig. 10. Since there is no change in the loads and
productions of PV and Wind, the EMS sends the same refer-
ence to the BESS and diesel generator as in the initial state,
respectively. It shows that microgrid operates in stability, and
the DER units can follow the reference commands to generate
the required amount of power. In particular, the DERs exhibit
satisfactory transients thanks to the fast communication link
between RTDS and EMS that the time delay caused by the
round trip to send the signals is negligible.
2162 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2014

Fig. 10. Combined signal and power HIL experiment setup.

The transient responses of the HUT are investigated when the

microgrid switches between grid-connected to islanding mode.
The power HIL test results are shown in Fig. 11(a) and (b),
in which channel 1 is the reference signal of one phase from
RTDS (three-phase bus voltage), channel 3 is the PCC switch
signal and channel 4 is the reconstructed signal at the power
interface output of the corresponding phase. The reference
signal in RTDS is scaled (base value 0.4 kV) and sent out
through gigabit transceiver analogue output (GTAO) (±5 V),
therefore the magnitude of the actual reference is equal to the
magnitude shown in the oscilloscope times 0.4 kV/5 V (80).
The transient responses when microgrid transferred from
islanding to grid-connected mode are presented in Fig. 11(a).
Before switching to the grid-connected mode, the real output
voltage (channel 4) can track the magnitude and the phase of
the reference signal (channel 1) accurately. When the micro-
grid switched to grid connected mode, there is a sudden change
in the reference signal. The output signal cannot track the ref-
erence signal very precisely immediately as indicated by the
phase shift shown in the figure. However, the output can track
the reference after about three periods’ time thanks to the fast
dynamics of the power interface.
Fig. 11(b) shows the responses of HUT when microgrid
switched from grid-connected to islanding mode. After switch-
ing to islanding mode, the reference signal does not exhibit sud-
den change then the output voltage can track it accurately. The
tracking performance presented in Fig. 11(a) and (b) shows the Fig. 11. Experimental results of HUT. (a) From islanding to grid-connected
different dynamic interactions between HUT and the microgrid mode. (b) From grid-connected to islanding mode.
which results in different tracking behaviors of the power inter-
face under different microgrid operating condition. the power HIL can be carried out at the same time to test the
The test results shown in Fig. 10 indicate that the EMS can real response of the HUT [Fig. 11(a) and (b)]. The closed-loop
monitor and control the simulated microgrid in real-time, and interactions between the simulated microgrid and the hardware

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WANG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A UNIVERSAL PLATFORM FOR HIL TESTING
Fig. 12. Results of measurments of components of microgrid in islanding mode with HUT step change.
load are clearly demonstrated by the experiment of sample
platform.
To further investigate the interaction between HUT and EMS,
the experiment is carried out with a change of the load of the
HUT in islanding mode. The load of the HUT is connected to
the microgrid at the moment A and disconnected at the moment
B, the interactions between HUT and EMS is shown in Fig. 12.
As shown in the result, the diesel generator follows the change
of the load to balance the generation and load demand. The
voltage and frequency of the microgrid are affected slightly by
the change of the HUT but reach the nominal value, respec-
tively, in steady-state. The change of the load of the HUT influ-
ences slightly the other components such as PV and wind.
The interaction between HUT and EMS show in Fig. 12
validates the feasibility of the proposed platform to test the
HUT and EMS.
Therefore, the concept of the sample platform (combined sig-
nal HIL and power HIL) is verified.
B. Evaluation of Results and Discussion of the Sample
Application
The real-time operation of the sample platform is validated
by testing the operation and control of the microgrid, and the
real response of the HUT during microgrid transition operation.
The simulation results show that the developed sample plat-
form is an effective tool to test the system-level controller of
a microgrid in real time. In addition, the implemented commu-
nication interface provides a link between EMS and RTDS with
high bandwidth and low latency, thus the DER units can receive
the updated commands rapidly. Furthermore, the developed
EMS using LabVIEW as designing environment has several
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2163
advantages such as easy-to-use, high reliability, capability to
design complex algorithm and good scalability for black-box
testing. The experiment results of the power HIL test indicate
the proper function of the power interface which can reconstruct
the reference signal with fast dynamic and build the closed-loop
test to study the interactions between the simulated model and
the HUT.
The limitations of this platform are mainly from RTDS sim-
ulation and communication interface. As one rack of RTDS
only supports 66 nodes, multiple racks have to be used when
a larger system is simulated, which therefore gives more
time delays. Also, more detailed DER models should be
built. The communication interface has no redundancy so that
backup solutions should be designed once the communication
failed.
VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper proposes an integrated framework for testing
operation and control of microgrids as well as their individ-
ual components. The universality of this platform is achieved
by combing a signal HIL and a power HIL, which allows for
testing of EMS and hardware controllers at signal level, and
testing of hardware devices like power inverter/converter in
power level. The design requirements of modeling and sim-
ulation, power and communication interface in this platform
are discussed in detail. In order to prove the feasibility of this
platform, an example of application is presented. The sample
platform comprises of a simulated microgrid in RTDS, a high-
performance communication interface, an EMS, and a power
interface. A laboratory implementation is carried out to test
the sample platform. The test results verify that the proposed
2164 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 10, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2014
platform is an effective tool to test the system-level controller
(signal HIL) of a microgrid in real time and at the same time
carry out the power HIL to test the real response of a hardware.
Therefore, the concept of the complete platform is preliminar-
ily validated, and the added-value compared to the existing test-
ing platforms (e.g., test individual component) is demonstrated.
Further work will focus on studying the integrated platform.
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[43] A. Benigni, H. Helmedag, and A. Monti, “FlePS: A power interface Ji Guo received the B.S. degree in electrical engi-
for power hardware in the loop,” in Proc. Power Electron. Appl. (EPE), neering from Tongji University, Shanghai, China,
Aug./Sep. 2011, pp. 1–10. in 2012. He is currently working toward the Mas-
[44] S. Jaloudi et al., “Communication strategy for grid control and monitoring ter’s degree at Rheinish-Westfälishce Technische
of distributed generators in Smart Grids using IEC and IEEE standards,” Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen,
in Proc. 2nd IEEE PES Int. Conf. Exhib. Innovative Smart Grid Technol. Germany.
(ISGT Europe), 2011, pp. 1–6. He was a Student Assistant with the Institute
[45] Matlab Compiler. (2008). Build Standalone Applications and Soft- of Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH
ware Components From MATLAB Programs [Online]. Available: Aachen University. Currently, he is an Intern with the
http://www.mathworks.com/products/compiler/ Smart Grid Division, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany.

Jing Wang (S’12) received the M.S. degree in elec-

Antonello Monti (M’94–SM’02) received the M.S.
trical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University,
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
Xi’an, China, in 2010. Currently, she is pursu-
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, in 1989 and
ing the Ph.D. degree in control of renewable
1994, respectively.
energy with the Institute for Automation of Com- From 1990 to 1994, he was with the Research
plex Power System, E.ON Energy Research Cen-
Laboratory, Ansaldo Industria, Milan, Italy, design-
ter, Rheinish-Westfälishce Technische Hochschule
ing the digital control of large power drives. In
(RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
1995, he joined as an Assistant Professor with the
In 2010, she joined the Institute for Automa- Department of Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di
tion of Complex Power Systems, E.ON Energy
Milano, Milan, Italy. From 2000 to 2008, he was
Research Center, RWTH Aachen University. Her
an Associate Professor and then a Full Professor
research interests include power inverters for renewable energy, power quality,
with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina,
hardware-in-the-loop simulation, and energy management of microgrid. Columbia, SC, USA. Currently, he is the Director with the Institute for Automa-
tion of Complex Power Systems, E.ON Energy Research Center, Rheinish-
Westfälishce Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen,
Yulun Song received the B.S. degree in electri- Germany.
cal engineering from Tongji University, Shanghai,
China, in 2012. He is currently working toward the
Master’s degree at Rheinish-Westfälishce Technische
Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen,
Germany.
He was a Student Assistant with the Institute
of Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH
Aachen University. Currently, he is an Intern with the
Power Electronics Group, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB)
Corporate Research Center, Baden, Switzerland.

Wendong Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in

electrical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong Univer-
sity, Xi’an, China and the Master’s degree in electri-
cal engineering at Rheinish-Westfälishce Technische
Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University, Aachen,
Germany. Currently, he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree
in high voltage measurement at Xi’an Jiaotong
University.
He was a Student Assistant with the Institute
for Automation of Complex Power Systems, E.ON
Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University.

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