New Project: MV emulation platform for pumped hydro storage plants

Power Electronics Laboratory at EPFL has received SFOE funding for the project titled "Real-Time Hardware-in-the-Loop Emulation Platform for Pumped Hydro Storage Power Plants”. Project goal is to establish medium voltage emulation platform for pumped hydro storage plants (PHSP). This will enable investigations on the power electronic technologies that can (i) modernize and optimize existing installations in Switzerland or worldwide, (ii) improve the efficiency of the overall system and (iii) increase the offering of ancillary services for the utilities. A complete PHSP emulation platform will allow to test various PHSP operating modes and in particular its interactions with the grid. It will be realized at medium voltage of 6kV and with rating of 0.5MVA. The main elements of the system are illustrated below and summarized as: The hydraulic part of the PHSP system will be emulated by means of the induction machine (2) fed by ABB ACS 2000 medium voltage converter (3), with references generated from the real-time simulations of the complete system with different PHSP configurations (6). The synchronous generator (4) in the system will be connected through a 4Q modular multilevel converter (5) to a 6kV 4Q high performance grid emulator (7). PHSP emulation platform will greatly enhance research capabilities of medium voltage research facilities of Power Electronics Laboratory.