Grid integration studies of a switched reluctance generator for future hardware-in-the-loop experiments

This paper investigates the generation capabilities of a switched reluctance machine for possible wind power generation applications. The long-term goal is to conduct Power Hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulation using a dSpace-controlled 1kW switched reluctance generator (SRG) available in the lab. In the proposed PHIL simulations, the SRG is controlled to output a constant DC output voltage, which is then fed into a real-time digital simulator (RTDS), amplified, inverted, and integrated with the grid. The inverter and the grid are modeled within the RTDS software platform (RSCAD). Appropriate wind data, also modeled within RTDS is scaled accordingly and fed back into the lab as speed command for the machine. In order to achieve this future goal, a complete simulation study of the system is performed in both Simulink and RSCAD to validate the viability of the proposed method as a precursor to the actual experimental study. This paper presents this study, which includes a mathematical model of the SRG integrated with the grid, and the simulation results.