OpenDSS & Typhoon HIL co-simulation
Demonstration of a simple power-flow analysis of a PV-Plant using OpenDSS.
Introduction
Power flow studies plays an important role in supporting decision making in the power systems field. Since modeling power flow with multiple load sources can be quite complex, several tools have been developed to facilitate power flow studies at the grid level. OpenDSS is a power distribution system simulator (DSS) from EPRI. In a nutshell, it allows you to solve the power flow for the fundamental grid frequency.
This example illustrates the application of the Typhoon HIL software in the field of Power Systems by co-simulation with the OpenDSS software. Typhoon HIL and OpenDSS can be interfaced together by means of a voltage-power exchange over the power system bus. That interface happens at the HIL SCADA level through Python APIs. It works by providing the OpenDSS simulation with information about power injections on a specific bus, solving a snapshot of the power flow, and then providing a new voltage setpoint at that same bus to the emulation running on the HIL device. On the OpenDSS side, the interfaced bus is any regular bus (P, Q node); on the Typhoon HIL side, the interfaced bus is a three-phase voltage source with a three-phase power measurement connected at its terminals.
Model description
Figure 1: Grid-connected average PV inverter model
Figure 2: PV inverter subsystem
Figure 3: OpenDSS model
Figure 4: Voltage-power exchange between two models

Simulation
This application comes with a pre-built SCADA panel shown in Figure 5. It offers the most essential user interface elements (widgets) to monitor and interact with the simulation at runtime, allowing you to further customize it according to your needs.
Figure 5: SCADA panel
Figure 6: SCADA panel

Figure 7: Power flow report obtained when the switch is closed

Figure 8: SCADA_panel when the switch is open
Figure 9: Power flow report obtained when the switch is open

Files | |
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Typhoon HIL files |
examples\models\power systems\opendss power flow co-simulation opendss power flow co-simulation.tse, opendss power flow co-simulation.cus, opendss_model.dss, PV_250KW.ipvx |
Minimum hardware requirements | |
No. of HIL devices | 1 |
HIL device model | HIL402 |
Device configuration | 1 |