Typhoon HIL Blog

Story Summary

• AVL List GmbH uses Typhoon HIL test solutions in the agile development, prototyping, testing, and maintenance of firmware and hardware versions of their e-Storage BTE product portfolio.

• AVL e-Storage BTE can act as a battery tester and battery emulator for testing and validating batteries, e-motors, and inverters in early development phases.

• C-HIL reduces firmware development and testing time, and as a result speeds up the time-to market-for new features by enabling automated testing through all product variant cases.

• HIL in one word: Agile.

Energy networks worldwide are evolving to become increasingly more decentralized, fueled by new developments in many sectors: Industry 4.0, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), electric vehicles (EVs), and more. This means greater need for robust local control and storage systems to avoid dangerous disruptions or blackouts. These factors are driving innovation, particularly in two areas: new power electronic controllers for energy storage and DERs, and new system level control architectures that can control microgrids effectively in a wider range of conditions. 

What is the challenge? 

The electric power systems are going through a transition that encompass digitalization, decentralization, and decarbonization. This will lead to more resilient power grids due to higher adoption of digital technologies, renewable power sources, and new battery storage systems. Everyone will benefit from the enhanced control, efficiency, and maintenance capabilities, but it all has to start from smart test-driven design. There is a need for integrated solutions to improve power system performance which will be data-based, so the systems are built with the end specs in mind and thoroughly tested throughout all possible test scenarios in an automated manner. 

Typhoon HIL Champion – Mr. Hashimoto from National Institute in Fukushima

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

The Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology’s (AIST) Fukushima Renewable Energy Research Institute is one of the world's largest facilities for testing and evaluation of high-power power electronics converters. It’s mission and goals are similar to Sandia National Laboratories and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in US, and Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Europe.

"One of the advantages of HIL is that it is capable of real-time simulation. This will give us confidence in our model or our algorithm before the actual implementation of the nanogrid.

 

-Dr. Nadia Mei Lin Tan, Associate Professor at UNITEN

Story Summary:

• HIL streamlined Honda R&D control development and testing.
  
• Complexity of embedded systems requires more development effort and time. 
  
• With an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, first-time HIL users can start simulating immediately.
  
• Fast model compilation with HIL resulted in significantly reduced verification time.
  
  

At the Honda R&D power electronics development department, improving productivity, streamlining development, and shortening delivery time are essential. These are also the key reasons why Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) and model-based development (MBD) is attracting attention in control development. Why did Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a long-time user and advocate of HIL technology, choose Typhoon HIL?

We asked the person in charge at the development department.

The case study featured here is a 3 MW doubly fed induction motor (DFIM) drive used for mining applications. The DFIM drive controls were designed, built, and tested by Indrivetec AG, at the request of CSE-Uniserve. Indrivetec AG is a Zurich-based power electronics, drives, and energy storage company and is an early adopter of Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) technology with a research lab primarily based on HIL for control design and testing.

The stator of this motor is connected to the medium voltage grid, and the rotor is connected to a liquid resistor of the system integrator CSE-Uniserve and an Indrivetec Insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) converter. Here, the resistor is used for starting and running at a constant speed, while the converter is used for variable speed operation.

• Employ high-fidelity modeling of electronic and EV systems.
  
• Safely catch control issues before deployment.
• Improve project schedule performance and streamline workflow.
• Fully automate testing.

• Easily import model parameters.

Model-based software development is a widely accepted practice in the automotive industry, motivated by the software's safety critical nature and the need for the development and testing process to comply with the ISO 26262 standard. With the availability of accurate physical plant models (e.g. motor drive), software testing can start early in the development process, allowing you to discover and fix problems as soon as they arise.

• Software is becoming a key value generator for Variable Frequency Drives
• New control algorithm development is driven by new motor designs, new semiconductor switches, and more powerful processors
• System level interoperability requirements are constantly expanding
• Modular power converter design has become a standard
• Grid code compliance is becoming a requirement
• Software lifecycle maintenance complexity is exploding