Hardware in the Loop Testing of a Protection Scheme for Microgrid using RTDS with IEC 61850 Protocol

The main challenge of the microgrid is to design a suitable protection scheme due to the complexity of the architecture and the rapid change in the settings of the relays. The IEC 61850 models are used to connect a physical device to the RTDS in a closed loop test environment. Using an IEC 61850 interface to test a protective relay requires proper hardware and software configuration tools and a good understanding of how to configure the protective relay's IEC 61850 communications. This paper presents an integration between a simulated model using RTDS and physical devices SEL 421-7 relays to protect the microgrid that includes different resources connected based on inverter interface. IEEE 1588 standard is used to provide sub nanoseconds latency between the RTDS and the external devices. The measurement signals are synchronized between RTDS and the external devices using GTSYNC interface card and SEL-2488 Satellite-Synchronized Network Clock. Energy storage device is used to help the system to maintain the voltages at AC/DC sides and frequency at fault condition. The results showed that the co-simulation infrastructure introduces a highly dependable design, analysis, and testing environment for cyber and physical data flow in the system.