Generic PV plant
Description and demonstration of the capabilities of the Generic PV Plant component.
Introduction
The usage of microgrids has been steadily increasing over the last few years, and so has been the need to model and test their control system. In short, the microgrid field is currently on the rise, accompanied by a growing need for more efficient microgrid components.
- active power curtailment and reactive power control
- plant state machine, faults detection, and limits according to nominal values
- ramping functionalities for reference signals and MPPT
This model demonstrates how you can use the Generic PV Plant components and what the advantages of these componets are for your own applications in this domain.
Model description
_002.png)
_003.png)
Simulation
This application comes with a pre-built SCADA panel shown in Figure 4. 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.
- Disabled – the state when the inverter is turned off and the main circuit breaker is open.
- Starting up - the state of the inverter between the moment of enabling signal activation and the moment when the inverter starts operating, e.g. the synchronization time.
- Running – the state when the inverter is operating.
- Error – the state when a fault is detected. If the inverter is in the error state, in order
to start the plant again, it is necessary to reset the alarm.
Figure 4. SCADA_panel
PV Power Plant Interface is shown in Figure 5. The left of the figure shows the Inverter Control and Status where you can read the state of the inverter as well as get information if protection is active. Here you can also read the measurements of active, reactive and apparent power, as well as the power factor. Parameters, such as temperature and irradiance, can be changed in the External commands group.
_005.png)
- Overcurrent protection – this type of protection occurs when some of the input phase currents are 1.5 times over the maximum allowed instantaneous current.
- Grid voltage is out of range - appears in case when the grid voltage is outside the specified relative range [0.5, 1.5] pu. This protection is active in grid-following mode.
- Grid frequency is out of range – activation of this type of protection is caused by grid frequency which is outside the specific relative range [0.5, 1.5] pu.
- Overpower protection – this type of protection kicks in when the measured apparent power is
1.2 times greater than the maximum allowed apparent power.
Figure 6. Grid voltage out of range protection is activated
_007.png)
Files | |
---|---|
Typhoon HIL files |
examples\models\microgrid\pv plant\pv plant (generic) pv plant gen.tse, pv plant gen.cus examples\tests\109_pv_plant_generic\test_test_pv_plant_generic.py |
Minimum hardware requirements | |
No. of HIL devices | 1 |
HIL device model | HIL402 |
Device configuration | 1 |
Test automation
TyphoonTest IDE script path: examples\tests\109_pv_plant_generic\test_test_pv_plant_generic.py
This test demonstrates the HzWatt grid code functionality that is supported in the PV Power Plant (generic) component. Nominal parameters for the PV are defined on the component's mask. For this test, nominal power and nominal frequency are of interest. Nominal power is 250KW while nominal frequency is 50Hz.
The test contains five test cases. Four test cases verify if measured values for power and frequency correspond to the reference values. Different values for frequency and active power are set, and it is checked whether the measured values correspond to the reference values with a tolerance of 1%.
Those passed tests indicate that the reference value and measured value are in the expected bandwith, meaning that HzWatt grid code functionality behaving as expected.
The last test case plots the HzWatt curve with reference and measured values as you can see in Figure 8. There are also indicated points corresponding to the measured frequency and active power. This plot is generated in Typhoon Test IDE.
_008.png)
Authors
[1] Jovana Markovic