As a crucial part of cyber-physical systems, a digital twin can process data, visualize processes, and send commands to the control system, which can be used for the research on thermal power plants that are vital for providing energy for manufacturing and industry, and also daily consumptions. This article introduces the methodologies and techniques toward a web-based digital twin thermal power plant. To implement a web-based digital twin thermal power plant, the architecture, modeling, control algorithm, rule model, and physical-digital twin control are explored. The potential functionalities of the web-based digital twin including real-time monitoring, visualization and interactions, and provided services for physical thermal plants and universities are also presented. A case study has been provided to illustrate the web-based digital twin power plant. The research in this article can provide potential solutions for web-based digital twin research and education.

This paper is concerned with the voltage tracking problem of DC microgrids subject to communication delays and packet losses, for which existing work commonly adopts passive fault-tolerant approaches. To accurately compensate for the above communication constraints experienced by DC microgrids, a coupled discrete microgrid model is developed on the basis of the physical laws of actual DC microgrids. Unlike the practice of passively tolerating communication delays, through the physical model established, this paper suggests a consensus-based proportional-integral predictive control strategy, which can actively compensate for communication delays and consecutive packet dropouts encountered by DC microgrids. Under the observer-based distributed networked predictive control framework, each distributed generation subsystem in the microgrid exchanges its own measurements over the network and integrates information from controllers of other units to achieve output voltage consensus in the presence of time delays and packet losses. Furthermore, to demonstrate the generality of the proposed method, the sufficient and necessary conditions for the DC microgrid system to accomplish voltage tracking are given. These conditions are rendered in the form of matrix eigenvalues associated with the physical connections and communication couplings between distributed generation units. Besides, the stability and convergence of the closed-loop microgrid system are given in the form of linear matrix inequality based on the Lyapunov function. Finally, the performance of the proposed control scheme is evaluated in terms of its convergence, robustness to load variations, and plug-and-play functionality through the built photovoltaic cell-based (with battery banks) DC microgrid hardware system.

The monitoring and control of DC-DC converters have become key issues since DC-DC converters are gradually playing increasingly crucial roles in power electronics applications such as electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. As an emerging and transforming technology, the digital twin, which is a dynamic virtual replica of a physical system, can potentially provide solutions for the monitoring and control of DC-DC converters. This work discusses the design and implementation of the digital twin DC-DC converter in detail. The key features of the physical and twin systems are outlined, and the control architecture is provided. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed digital twin method, four possible cases that may occur during the practical control scenarios of DC-DC converter applications are discussed. Simulations and experimental verification are conducted, showing that the digital twin can dynamically track the physical DC-DC converter, detect the failure of the physical controller and replace it in real time.

The output power of a single-phase inverter is insufficient for high-power applications, such as fast wireless chargers for electrical vehicles. A higher power level can be obtained via a multiphase parallel resonant inverter, which comes with a possible cost of the unbalance current problem. Coupled inductors with a cyclic cascade connection instead of a complex controller are employed to alleviate this problem. A blocking capacitor is introduced to stop the dc component of the circulating current. Equations for suppressing ability of circulating currents under the proposed topology with various numbers of parallel phases are derived. Main power loss components are analyzed and the reason why multiphase systems with a high output current have a higher efficiency is theoretically explained. A prototype of an inverter with six-phase half-bridge parallel topology is developed and built to verify the theoretical analysis. The prototype is used to supply an inductive power transfer system, which delivers power at a distance of 20 cm. When the receiving power of the 6.87 Ω load in the rectifier is 20 kW, one obtains a 95.6% efficiency measured as the power of the dc-load divided by that of dc-input at the inverter.

This paper introduces the design and implementation of a plug-in free online 3-D interactive laboratory based on networked control system laboratory (NCSLab) framework. The system relying only on HTML5 provides full supports for control engineering experimentation. The users are allowed to design their own control algorithms and apply them to the remote test rigs. Using the web-based interface, multiple widgets such as real-time charts, virtual gauges, and live images are available to customize the monitoring interfaces. To enhance the sense of immersion, 3-D animations which are synchronized with the remote experimental processes are also provided. The users can watch and interact with the remote experiments through the 3-D replicas. Various HTML5 based toolkits are integrated seamlessly under the NCSLab framework. NCSLab provides visualized services for the whole process of control experimentation including remote monitoring, tuning, configuration, and control algorithm implementation. As the network delay could disturb the 3-D representation, a communication scheme using web protocols is also implemented. The feedback from teaching shows the general acceptance and effectiveness of NCSLab is notably high. As most existing online laboratories adopt either native applications or plug-ins, the methodologies and technologies used in NCSLab could be insightful for other online laboratories toward web-based cross-platform systems.