Development of Dynamic Test Cases in
OPAL-RT Real-time Power System Simulator
Shiv Kumar Singh1, Bibhu P. Padhy1, Student Member, IEEE, S. Chakrabarti1, Senior Member, IEEE,
S.N. Singh1, Senior Member, IEEE, A. Kolwalkar2, Member, IEEE, and
S. M. Kelapure2, Senior Member, IEEE
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
2
GE Global Research Centre, Bangalore, India
shivkumar.iiet@gmail.com, bibhupee@iitk.ac.in, saikatc@iitk.ac.in, snsingh@iitk.ac.in, Amol.Kolwalkar@ge.com,
shekhar.M.kelapure@ge.com
Abstract— The paper describes the development of the
dynamic models of a number of commonly used test power
systems in OPAL-RT real-time simulator environment.
The process of building the dynamic test cases is described,
and the challenges faced during such development are
discussed. The performance of the dynamic test cases is
investigated under various disturbances such as single-
line-to-ground fault, line outages, step load change, and
tap changing of on- load tap changers.
Keywords— Dynamic simulation; OPAL-RT; SimPowerSystem
I. INTRODUCTION
To analyse the performance of the power systems under large
disturbances, it is important to consider the dynamic models of
the individual components[1]. Time-domain simulations,
involving numerical integration and solution of the differential
and algebraic equations describing the power system, predict
the trajectory of the system states following a disturbance. The
dynamic data for a number of test systems are available in the
literature[2]. However, very few of these references contain
the complete set of static and dynamic data that are required to
run dynamic simulations with the detailed dynamic models of
the components. The chosen platform for simulation is
eMEGASIM real-time simulator from OPAL-RT Inc.,
Canada[3].
Dynamic simulation of power systems involves the
solution of a large number of differential and algebraic
equations (DAEs). The differential equations need to be
solved by using suitable numerical integration techniques. A
real-time simulator, such as the OPAL-RT eMEGASIM, uses
parallel computing facilities to solve the DAEs in real-time.
This means that, a dynamic phenomenon, such as power
transients, is simulated, and the results are made available to
the user exactly as it happens in actual power systems. Off-
line PC-based simulators may perform the simulations as
accurately as the real-time simulator. However, the time-
response of the solutions, for large systems, may be slower
than the actual phenomenon. The operator can, therefore, gain
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more confidence in the design of the hardware device or
software routine for controlling the power system, if they are
tested in close loop with the real-time simulator.
The eMEGAsim real-time simulator from OPAL-RT
integrates Matlab Simulink and SimPowerSystem toolboxes,
and RT-LAB distributed processing software and hardware
platform for high speed and real-time simulation of
electromagnetic transients[3].The source codes for the block
diagram level models can be automatically generated and
uploaded into the target processor for real-time simulation.
The major issues in developing the complete dynamical
model of the system, such as building models of the individual
components, compilation, and initialization are discussed
briefly in this paper. The models of various components, such
as the synchronous machine, the governor/turbine, the
excitation system, the three-phase transformer, the
transmission line, the loads, the switches, and the various
measurement blocks used by the real-time simulator are also
briefly discussed. Some of the results from power flow
studies, dynamic simulation, fault studies, sudden changes in
load, and tap change in load tap changers (LTCs) are
presented. The complete dynamic models of two test systems,
viz., WSCC 9-bus system and New England 39-bus system are
developed, and used for the simulation studies.
This paper is organized as follows: The sections II
describes about various components used to build the system
model, Section III presents a brief description about OPAL-RT
simulator. The system description has been presented in section
IV. The test results and discussions are described in Section V
and, finally, the main conclusions are provided in Section VI.
II. MODEL DETAILS
Brief details regarding some of the important components
used in the building the dynamical models of power system
are discussed below:
 A. Synchronous Machine
The generator model considered for the study is full
detailed model present in SimPowerSystem toolbox. The input
to the model are mechanical power input and outputs are
machine speed in rad/sec. Various measurement signals can be
used for various studies and control applications. The model
takes into account the dynamics of the stator, the field, and the
damper windings also.
B. Excitation System
The IEEE DC1A type[1] exciter which is used in this
paper, is also present in SimPowerSystem toolbox. The basic
elements that form the excitation system block are the voltage
regulator and the exciter which provides direct current to the
synchronous machine field winding. It also performs control
and protective functions for satisfactory function of the power
system [1].
C. Steam Turbine and Governor
A steam turbine converts stored energy of high pressure
and high temperature steam into rotating energy, which is in
turn converted into electrical energy by the generator. The
kinetic energy of this high velocity steam is converted into
shaft torque by the buckets. The model details can be found in
[4].
D. Load Modelling
Accurate load modeling is an important issue, must be
modeled to achieve an adequate match between actual and
simulated behavior. The load models are traditionally
classified as static loads and dynamic loads. For static loads
the load impedance Z, is constant and determined from the
nominal phase-to-phase voltage Vn at the specified frequency.
Hence, the active power P, and reactive power (QL-QC)
consumed are proportional to the square of the applied bus
voltage.
In case of 3-phase dynamical load model the active power
P and reactive power Q of the load vary as follows:
np
⎛V ⎞ 1 + Tp1s
P(s) = P0 ⎜ ⎟ (1)
⎜V ⎟ 1 + Tp 2 s
⎝ 0⎠
nq
⎛ ⎞ 1 + Tq1s
Q(s) = Q0 ⎜ V ⎟ (2)
⎜ V0 ⎟ 1 + Tq 2 s
⎝ ⎠
where V0 is the initial positive sequence voltage, P0 , Q0 are the
initial active and reactive power, V is positive sequence
voltage, n p and nq are the exponents to control the load, T p1 and
T p 2 are time constants controlling the dynamics of the active
power P , Tq1 and Tq 2 are time constants controlling the
dynamics of the reactive power Q . Hence the user has more
flexibility to decide the type of load required. Both the type of
load components are available in SimPowerSystem toolbox[4].
E. Transmission Line Modelling
A transmission line is characterized by four parameters:
series resistance R due to the conductor resistivity, shunt
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conductance G due to leakage currents between the phases and
ground, series inductance L due to magnetic field surrounding
the conductors, and shunt capacitance C due to the electric
field between conductors. There are two types of line models.
The pi and distributed line models are widely used in model
building of the transmission lines. The pi type model is
generally used for short length lines with lumped parameter,
whereas in distributed parameter line model, resistance,
inductance, and capacitance are uniformly distributed along
the line. These line models are available in the
SimPowerSystem block-set. However, in hard real time
simulation, numerical oscillations are observed that often
affect the accuracy of the result. To avoid this type problem,
Advanced Real time electro Mechanical Simulator
(ARTEMiS) distributed transmission line model is used to
make parallel simulation of an electric circuit that enables
distributed simulation of power systems on several CPUs or
cores. The ARTEMiS used the intrinsic delay of the line to
split the circuit without affecting the dynamic property of the
system.
III. OPAL-RT SIMULATOR
The eMEGASim® simulator used in this work contains a
powerful real-time target computer equipped with 12 OP5600,
3.3 GHz processor cores, with 8 cores activated, running on
Red Hat Linux real-time operating system. Two user-
programmable FPGA-based I/O management options
available, powered by the Xilinx OP5142 Spartan-3 FPGA
boards. The 4A288a input/output package is composed of 80
Digital I/O points, and more than 64 analog I/O channels. The
OPAL-RT simulator present in the lab is shown in Fig. 1. The
software platform required is discussed below.
A. RT-LAB Overview
RT-LAB is a distributed real-time platform that allows
users to test dynamical models built in MATLAB/Simulink
environment, for Hardware in Loop (HIL) simulation at very
high accuracy, low cost, and in real time. RT-LAB's flexibility
and scalability allows it to be used in virtually any simulation
or control system application, and to add computing-power to
simulations, where and when it is needed. To simulate very
complex non-linear systems like power system in real time
with high precision and high stability, the RT-LAB comes
with special Simulink-based modelling tools, namely,
ARTEMIS and RT-Events that allows real time simulation in
multi-core processors. The brief description of these tools as
follows.
ARTEMiS:
It is a power systems real-time solver that provides a high
degree of stability for the discrete time state-space models. It
also enables parallel computation of electric circuits on
different CPU cores. It enables to simulate a very large
number of switches in real-time.

Fig. 1 OPAL-RT simulator
RT-Events:
The RT-Events Block-set works with a fixed step size
solver; hence it is compatible with the Real Time Workshop
(RTW), and can be used for real-time applications.
OPAL-RT structure:
To ensure real time simulation, a larger system model can
be divided into a number of subsystems, and can run in multi
core/processers in parallel without affecting the dynamics of
the original system. In the RT-LAB model, there is always one
master subsystem in each model; however, slave subsystem
only needed when distribute the computational effort across
multiple cores. The signal communication is done across two
subsystems, with the help of Opcomm block. For connecting
two subsystems one should use ARTEMiS transmission
lines/distributed parameter lines.
loads in the system are assumed to be constant impedance
type.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
This paper presents non-linear time-domain simulation
results with various disturbances in both the WSCC 9-bus
system and New England 39-bus system on OPAL-RT
platform. The time-domain simulation carried out in opal-RT
hardware has been presented in this section. Power systems
experience a wide variety of disturbances. It is impractical and
uneconomical to design controllers to maintain the systems
stability for every possible contingency. To test the system
behavior at various changes in operating conditions, large and
small types of disturbances are considered that guide the
operating engineer to take corrective action at the time of
severity. The study of system stability, time to reach steady
state, line power flows, on-load automatic tap changing
transformer dynamics has been tested after being subjected to
large and small disturbances in the system are presented
below.
A. WSCC 9 Bus System
a) Single line to ground fault
Single line to ground fault applied in phase-A at bus 7 for
70 milliseconds. The response of active generation by the
generator and the power flow in various transmission lines are
shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. It can be observed that
the system has been stable and achieved steady state in 5 sec
followed by the disturbance.

Execute the Model under RT-LAB:

The steps to simulate the system in RT-LAB are depicted in the
flowchart in the Fig.3.

IV. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Two test systems are considered: the IEEE-9 bus system and
the New England 39 bus system. The brief descriptions about
the two systems are as follows.

A. WSCC 9 Bus System

The WSCC 9 bus system consists of three generators and

three loads. The load demand at bus 5 was 125 + j520 MVA,
bus6 a load demand of 90 + j30 MVA and load bus 8 having
demand of 100 + j35 MVA. The generator and line parameters
considered are taken from[5]. The single line diagram of the
system has given in Fig. 3.

B. New England 39 Bus System

The proposed methodology has been implemented on New
England system[6], which consists of 10-machines and 39-
Fig. 2 Flow chart for execute the model in RT-LAB
buses as shown in Fig. 4. Each generator is assumed to be
provided with governor, AVR and IEEE type-1exciter. The

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 milliseconds. The response of line outage has been shown in
Fig. 7 and 8.

180

160

Active Power (Mw)

140 Gen1
Gen2
120
Gen3
100

80

60
25 30 35 40 45
16.5/230
j0.0576

Time (sec)
Fig. 7 Active Power Generation of Generators

Fig. 3 WSCC 9 Bus Model

0.9

Active Power (pu)

0.8

0.7
Line-3
Line-4
0.6 Line-5

25 30 35 40 45
Time (sec)
Fig. 8 Power flow in transmission lines

160
Gen1
Active Power (Mw)

140 Gen2
Gen3
120

100

80

25 30 35 40 45
Time (sec)
Fig. 4 New England 39 Bus System Fig. 9 Active Power Generated by Generators

400 Gen1
Gen2
c) Load Change
Active Power (Mw)

200 Gen3
The load at bus-6 has been increased by 10% after 50 seconds
0 start of simulation. Figs. 9, 10, and 11 show the responses of active
generation by the generator, the generator speed deviation and the
-200
power flow in various transmission lines, respectively. It can be
25 30 35 40 45 observed that steady state has been achieved and the active power
Time (sec)
flows in all the lines have increased from its nominal value and
Fig. 5 Active Power Generation of Generators
generator speed has been decreased.

Line-3
d) On load tap changing
2
Line-4 Most of the transformers are provided with taps on
Active Power (pu)

1
Line-5 windings for voltage regulation by adjusting the taps position
in discrete manner. The taps are electrical contacts that are
0 designed to carry the rated current of the transformer. Here an
automatic on-line tap changing transformer has been
-1
25 30 35 40 45
simulated. The input to the regulator is the magnitude of bus
Time (sec) voltage. The tap position is automatically adjusted in discrete
Fig. 6 Power flow in transmission lines manner while achieving the desired voltage level. Fig. 12
shows the reference and tracking voltage with time and Fig.13
b) Single Line outage shows the tap position variation with time.
Another major disturbance applied to the system to test the
stability with variation in operating condition temporally by
taking out the line connecting buses 5 and 7 for 70

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 1.001 10
wm1
1 wm2 8

Active Power (p.u.)

Rotor Speed (p.u.)

wm3
0.999 6
Gen2
0.998
4 Gen6
0.997 Gen7
2 Gen9
0.996
25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 35 40 45 50 55 60
Time (sec) Time (sec)
Fig. 10 Rotor speed of Generators Fig. 14 Active Power generation of generators

Line-3
0.9
Line-4 3

Active Power (p.u.)

Active Power (p.u.)

Line-5
0.8
2

0.7 Line 16to17

1
Line 17to18

0.6 Line 25to26

0
25 30 35 40 45 35 40 45 50 55 60 65
Time (sec)
Fig. 11 Rotor speed of Generators
Fig. 15 Active Power flow in transmission Lines

1 Reference Voltage
Gen1
Voltage Change (p.u.)

Voltage at Bus-l2 6.5

Gen4

Active Power (p.u.)

Gen6
0.95
6 Gen7

0.9 5.5

0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (sec) 65 70 75 80
Time (sec)
Fig. 12 Change in bus-2 voltage
Fig. 16 Active Power Generation of Generators

2
3 Line 16to17
Change in Tap positions
2.5 Line 17to18
Tap positions

Active Power (p.u.)

0
Line 25to26
2
-2
1.5

1
-4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0.5
Time (sec) 65 70 75 80
Time (sec)
Fig. 13 Change in the Tap Positions with time
Fig. 17 Power flow in Transmission Lines

B. NE 39-Bus System
c) Step Load Change
a) Single Line to Ground Fault To test the system performance at different operating
A self-clearing line to ground fault is applied in phase–A in conditions a step load increase of 10% in load-4, load-8, load-
the line joining bus 4 and bus 14 for 70ms. The active power 18, and load-21 has been created simultaneously after 80 sec
generation and active power flow in transmission lines have start of simulation. The result for active power generated by
been shown in Figs. 14 and 15, respectively. The result clearly Gen-1,3,4, and 8 are depicted in Fig.18.
shows the stability of the system, and steady state achieved
with in 20 sec. d) On Load Tap Changing
An On-Line Tap Changing Transformer (OLTC) has been
b) Line outage placed in between bus 24 and load at that bus. The input to the
The line connecting buses 4 and 14 has taken out after 70 regulator is the magnitude of bus voltage. The tap position is
sec start of simulation to test the dynamic performance of the automatically adjusted in discrete manner to achieve the
system. The response of line outage has been shown in Figs. desired voltage level as depicted in Figs. 19 and 20.
16 and 17. The system is found to be stable and there is small
variation of steady state power flow in lines from its pre-fault
operating condition.

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 8 connected between bus-39 and bus-40. This modification has
also been shown in Fig.4. Addition of additional transformer
Active Power (Mw)

6 might affect the load flow results. Hence, the parameters

Gen-1 values are carefully chosen so that the load flow results do not
4 Gen-3 deviate much from the nominal values. New England 39-bus
Gen-4
Gen-8
system also has been divided into multiple subsystems to
2
20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
distribute the computational load in various processing units
Time (sec) for parallel processing operation, which helps in running the
Fig. 18 Active Power Generation of generators simulation in hard real time; otherwise, simulation overrun
errors can be observed.

1 VII. CONCLUSION
Change in Voltage (p.u.)

0.98
In this paper, the development of power system dynamic
Voltage at Bus 24
Reference Voltage
models in OPAL-RT real-time simulator environment has
0.96 been discussed. The performance of the dynamic test cases is
0.94
investigated under various disturbances such as single line to
ground fault, line outage, step load change, and tap changing
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (sec)
of on load tap changers. The challenges faced during such
Fig. 19 Voltage at Secondary side of Bus 24 development are also been discussed. The stability of the
IEEE 9-bus system and New England 39-bus system has been
studied.
4 Tap Positions
Change in Taps Positions

VIII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
3
The work was supported by General Electric (GE)
2 Corporate Research Centre, Bangalore, India, through project
no. GE /EE /20120310.
1

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Time (sec)
Fig. 20 Change in tap positions REFERENCES
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[Online].Available: www.opal-rt.com.
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