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Real-Time Facilities at Virginia Power Analytics & Cybersecurity (VPAC) Service Center

Ali Mehrizi-Sani, Professor, Virginia Tech

Fig. 1 below shows our existing testbed consisting of two RTDS cubicles (one rack with the NovaCor technology and two racks with the PB5 technology) with a total of 5 cores licensed. We also have a Typhoon HIL simulator. A physical microgrid setup is also shown, which includes a Spitzenberger and Spies (SPS) four-quadrant power amplifier, voltage-sourced converters, lead-acid batteries, photovoltaic (PV) panels, programmable DC sources, and electronic loads. All three RTDS racks are connected to a local area network (LAN) via Ethernet. The NovaCor rack includes two GTNET cards, which can support various protocols, including socket, Modbus, IEC-61850, and DNP3. Each PB5 rack has six processor cards and one workstation interface card, where both cards are connected to the LAN via Ethernet to make the racks available on the network. A global bus hub (GBH) is used for time step synchronization between the three racks using optical fiber connections between each rack and the GBH. The racks are also connected to each other via point-to-point optical fiber connections for inter-rack communication. Two Chroma electronic loads (4.5 kW and 1.8 kW) are connected to the amplifier. The electronic loads can simulate nonlinear loads and be used to study the grid under harmonic situations.  Programmable DC sources can be used to simulate the PV panel behavior under different conditions during real-time simulation. 

Other equipment in REGAL includes the following:

  • Raspberry Pi 4 
  • Keithley triple channel DC Power supply 
  • Keithley 2281S-20-6 Precision DC Supply & Battery Simulator 
  • BK precision XLN15010 Programmable DC power supply 
    • 150V/10.4 A 1.56 KW programmable DC power supply
  • Gwinstek SPD-3606 Daul-range DC power supply 
    • 60V/3A and 30V/6A DC power supplies
  • Chroma Programmable AC/DC Electronic load 63804 4.5kW/45A/350V
  • Chroma Programmable AC/DC Electronic load 63802 1.8kW/18A/350V
  • SPS 4-quadrant amplifier (three phase linear 4-quadrant amplifier supporting optic fiber and external input with three racks)
  • Tektronix TBS 2000B Series Digital Oscilloscope 
  • Tektronix MSO44 Digital Oscilloscope 
  • Tektronix AFG 31000 arbitrary function generator 
  • Tektronix TDS1002 => Two channel digital oscilloscope 
  • FLUKE 287 True RMS multimeter 
  • Magna power programmable DC power supply 200V/
  • Typhoon HIL 402 
  • SICAM A800 Simense controller having 5 units 
    • CP-8050
    • PS-8642
    • DO-8212
    • AO-8380 
    • AI-8320