In this paper, we present the Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) usage of a new simulation approach recently introduced by the authors and discuss the programmable logic interface required for the HIL simulation of high switching frequency power electronics converters. As a test case, we simulate a notional ship power system where one converter is externally controlled using the developed HIL simulation platform. The ship system is composed of eight converters all operating at 100kHz, the real-time simulation is performed using a FPGA-based platform and a 50 nanosecond simulation time step.

In this paper we present an approach for real-time simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing of Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs) that rely on switching models while supporting system level analysis. Using the Latency Based Linear Multistep Compound (LB-LMC) approach, we achieved a 50 ns simulation time step for systems composed of several MMC converters and for converters of various complexity. To facilitate system level testing, we introduce the use of a serial communication-based (Aurora) interface for HIL testing of MMC converters and we analyzed the effect that communication latency has on the accuracy of the HIL test. The simulation and HIL results are validated against an MMC laboratory prototype.

In this paper, we present a switching model of a Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) with half-bridge sub-modules for use in real-time simulations of power electronic systems with high time fidelity. This model is formulated for solving under the Latency Based Linear Multi-step Compound (LB-LMC) simulation method and utilizes a fast algorithm for handling anti-parallel diode conduction across switching elements without use of linearization, averaging, or iterative solving. All four possible conduction modes of switching modules (inserted, bypassed, open, short) are handled by this algorithm. The proposed MMC model is incorporated as a reusable circuit component into the Open Real-Time Simulation (ORTiS) framework, a set of open-source tools for code generating high-performance real-time circuit simulation solvers for FPGA or CPU execution. With modern FPGA implementation using high-level synthesis, the MMC model can real-time simulate with time steps of 26 to 32 nanoseconds for 2-128 switching modules, as shown in presented results.