Análisis del desempeño de plataformas de simulación en tiempo real para convertidores de potencia

Abstract

Currently, there are different real-time simulation platforms for electrical and electronic circuits, which allow the design and testing of controller systems, power electronics, and various electrical drives. Each real-time simulation platform establishes its own criteria and methodologies to carry out simulations of the systems under test, all of this to obtain faster and more accurate results, and reduce errors at the time of implementation of said circuits. In the research laboratory on alternative energy sources (LIFAE), of the Francisco José de Caldas District University, there is the real-time simulation tool Opal-rt 4510, which bases its operation on the hardware in the loop (HIL), and which is used for the modeling of power electronics systems, especially power converters, and whose tool has not yet been taken as much advantage as possible by university students, and That is why as a research project, the implementation and real-time simulation of power converters was carried out, with the objective of answering the question of whether it is possible to establish power converter models for academic purposes. , where said converter models were obtained from the comparisons of simulating each converter in real time in the CPU and in the FPGA of the opal, and where said models obtained from the comparisons could answer the question of whether it is possible that the models simulated in the opal CPU, are models that can be taken for academic purposes by students taking the subject of power electronics at the university, because the models of the converters simulated in the opal CPU are simulated with a much longer sampling time, compared to the very small sampling times with which a real-time simulation is done in the FPGA. The results obtained from simulating in real time, three types of power converters, show the great limitations that arise when a real-time simulation of a power converter is carried out, only using the Opal CPU or processor, to generate and process all the signals of interest in the circuit, given that it works with a longer sampling time, affecting the correct processing of the signals, and generating unexpected results, compared to those obtained using the FPGA, where the processing of the signals is a a higher speed, and the results obtained are those expected and real.