Hardware in the Loop (HIL) test bench for small-scale Distributed Generation systems

The test procedure of electrical drives for distributed generation (DG) systems generally requires the installation of dedicated prototypes on site: this is an expensive, time and power consuming procedure. In recent years, the availability of high performance calculation platforms have made possible to perform these tests using hardware in the loop (HIL) test benches before the plant installation. A HIL environment allows reducing costs and saving time because an implementation error can be easily identified and it is possible to test fault conditions in a safety way. This paper presents a general HIL test bench for DG electrical drive testing. Experimental results emulating different DG sources and plant have been provided to validate the approach.