PC-based real-time simulator and its application on testing of power plant auxiliary system control

Real-time simulator is usually used to make HIL (Hardware-In-Loop) testing of controllers. Most existed real-time simulators need specific hardware devices to implement “real-time”, which are with very high cost. In this paper one PC-based real-time simulator is proposed, which is with low cost and easy-to-use. As Microsoft Windows is not real-time operating system, QNX (real-time operating system) is used in the simulator to implement “real-time”. Commercial off-the-shelf I/O cards are installed in the simulator to connect with controllers. With prevalence of multi-core processors in PC, the capability of multi-core is also utilized to simulate one complex system with parallel mode. The purpose of power plant auxiliary system control is to optimize operation mode of auxiliary system in power plant, thus to minimize auxiliary system electricity consumption. The control strategy is implemented in ABB existed controller. It is not practical for the controller to be applied in real system before its testing and verification. PC-based real-time simulator proposed formerly is used to test and verify the control strategy with HIL.