Wide-Area Damping Controller Implementation and Hardware-In-the-Loop Testing Using Hybrid Simulation

A hybrid simulation using the real-time digital simulator RTDS and the Transient Stability Analysis Tool (TSAT) is used to validate the performance of a wide-area damping controller (WADC) under practical operating conditions such as constant and random communication delays and occasional data loss for the Saudi power grid. Several function modules are implemented and integrated within the WADC to improve its reliability and performance, such as adaptive delay compensator, data buffer, and supervisory control. RTDS is used to model the studied subsystem of Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), and the rest of the system is modeled in TSAT. The controller performance is validated through HIL test setup using an actual oscillation event. The system separation condition of the SEC system is validated using the HIL experiments. The HIL test results have demonstrated that the developed controller effectively improves the target inter-area oscillations’ damping under various communication network uncertainties.