Real-Time Modeling to Enable Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of Plug-In Electric Vehicle-Grid Interaction

Real-Time simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing are increasingly adopted by industry for the development and validation of complex systems. This paper presents the real-time modeling and power management of a Vehicle-Grid Integration (VGI) system. The VGI system consists of six AC level 2 Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) charging stations, a Photovoltaics (PV) farm, a commercial building load, and a switch connecting to 240V single phase power grid. PEV charging activities follow the SAE J1772 standard. An energy management algorithm is designed for the VGI system to coordinate the PEV charging with the building load and PV renewable generation. The coordination maintains the power consumption of the VGI system below utility’s demand charge pricing threshold. A real-time power system simulator, Opal-RT, is used in this study. The OPAL-RT system allows users to build detailed power system models using Matlab Simulink/SimPowerSystems and RT-LAB library, and run the models in real-time. The model-based approach enables the integration of power system models seamlessly with the power management algorithm and power electronics-level controllers. The simulation results show that the VGI model emulates the real system well and the coordinated PEV charging helps to balance the power generation and consumption of the VGI system to meet power management requirement.