Ensuring Stability and Accuracy of Multi-rate Electromagnetic Transient Simulation

Real-time digital power system simulators are used for testing and debugging control equipment intended for field installation. They simulate the power network in ‘real-time’, i.e., the simulation computations are rapidly completed so as to retain synchronism with a real-world clock. This requires the level of complexity in different components of the network to be judiciously selected so that the computation speed-up does not significantly compromise accuracy. Multi-rate simulation is a widely used approach to achieve this. It partitions the network into interconnected smaller sub-networks, and simulates critical sub-networks using a smaller timestep with larger timesteps for the others. As methods for stability and accuracy analysis for this method have hitherto not been investigated, this Mitacs project will extend the state of the art in simulation stability to investigate the stability of multi-rate simulation of power networks.
With the lessons learned, it will venture to develop a more robust interfacing technique for interconnecting the sub-networks in Multi-rate simulation. RTDS Technologies is expected to use this to enhance the quality of their commercial simulation products.

Faculty Supervisor:

Aniruddha (Ani) Gole

Student:

Huanfeng Zhao

Partner:

RTDS Technologies Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

University:

University of Manitoba

Program: