New Digital Simulator Protects Hardware Components

ACEP has recently purchased and installed the flagship real-time digital simulator from Opal-RT.

The OP5707 includes a powerful real-time central processing unit as well as a field programmable gate array to perform real-time simulations of power systems and power electronics. The equipment will be used for controller hardware-in-the-loop and power hardware-in-the-loop experiments as well as for pure simulations capable of running in real-time.

The OP5707 will be used for an upcoming U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder, Toyota, Wolfspeed  (a silicon carbide chip manufacturer) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a controller for a DC-DC converter for an electric vehicle.

The real-world controller will interact with a model of the converter running on the OP5707 rather than an actual physical converter. This greatly lowers the project’s risk by allowing development, testing and debugging of control algorithms without blowing up hardware components.