Evaluating a real-time model decoupling compensation approach for developing scalable, high-fidelity microgrid models

There is a pervasive proliferation of power electronics-based renewable generation and distributed energy resources (DERs) across the entire power grid, particularly more so in distribution systems and microgrids. Consequently, it is extremely essential to understand how their fast-acting controls interact with existing traditional machine controls and protection elements at a high level of fidelity. While real-time simulators allow the modeling at the requisite level of detail, they do not scale well and require decoupling of these systems to run in real-time. In this paper, we briefly describe our efforts in developing a real-time, decoupled model of the IEEE 123 node test feeder with three abstract microgrids and several inverters in HYPERSIM. We also describe our approach to compensate for the errors introduced by decoupling this model and provide some insights into its performance through some comparative case studies. We show that our proposed compensation approach adapts the level of compensation based on transients and minimizes the errors introduced overall while compared to no compensation approach and would enable developing larger scale models without losing accuracy to run in real-time.