An effective method for evaluating the accuracy of Power Hardware-in-the-Loop simulations

Power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulations need to be accurate to truly reflect the behavior of the systems under test. However, a PHIL simulation may result in errors or even instability due to imperfections (e.g., time delay, noise injection, phase lag, limited bandwidth) in the power interface, especially in high power applications. Additionally, it is usually difficult to determine the accuracy of a simulation because there is no reference available for people to know the ldquoshould-berdquo system responses in advance. Therefore, a method is demanded to predict the accuracy of PHIL simulations. In this paper, an effective method for evaluating the PHIL accuracy is proposed. This method provides a means to justify the result of a PHIL simulation analytically and quantitatively instead of empirically. While the method is based on linear system analysis, it is shown to be also applicable for nonlinear PHIL systems.