Design and implementation of a highly reconfigurable microgrid test bed platform

This paper presents the design of a Microgrid test bed platform. The aim of this test bed is to provide a real-time verification and simulation tool for islanded Microgrids. The main characteristics are high architectural flexibility, high reconfigurability of the simulated Microgrid, and low number of inverters required to simulate an islanded Microgrid in hardware. The test bed is composed of a number of unified inverter modules (simulation modules), each simulating one grid participant. Each simulation module consists of a three-phase voltage source inverter, a local controller and a real-time emulation of several generation plants. This approach allows a wide range of studies in Microgrid control and inverter control for Distributed Generation. This paper describes the test bed platform and demonstrates an implementation with four grid participants.