Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization Sharjah,U.A.E January 20-22 2009 ICMSAO’09-1REAL-TIME PLATFORM FOR THE CONTROL PROTOTYPING AND SIMULATION OF POWER ELECTRONICS AND MOTOR DRIVES Simon Abourida, Jean Belanger Opal-RT Technologies Inc. 1751 Richardson #2525 Montreal, J4P 1G6, Quebec, Canada Simon.abourida@opal-rt.com ABSTRACT The paper presents state-of-the-art technologies and platform for real-time simulation and control of motor drives, power converters and power systems. Through its support for Model-Based Design method with Simulink®, its powerful hardware (multi-core processors and FPGAs), and its specialized model libraries and solvers, this real-time simulator (RT-LAB™ ) enables the engineer and researcher to efficiently implement advanced control strategies on embedded hardware, or to conduct extensive testing of complex power electronics and real-time transient simulation of large power systems. 1. INTRODUCTION Over the years, it has been increasingly acknowledged how important and essential the tools of real-time simulation and testing in all industries are. These tools are no longer a luxury in modern system design, especially in electric motor drives and power electronics, whose applications are found in an ever increasing number in all sectors. As for power systems, it was the sector that pioneered the use of real-time simulators tens of years ago, starting with analog simulator, before the advent of computers and the development of hybrid then fully digital real-time simulators. On other hand, commercial simulation packages such as MATLAB/Simulink™ are now widely used in the industry, education, and research institutions alike. They have become...
