Real-Time Multi-Rate Electromagnetic Transient Simulation on Conventional CPUs

This paper presents a multi-rate simulation approach for Hydro-Québec’s real-time simulation software (Hypersim). This approach does not rely on specialized hardware; it consists of scheduling differently conventional CPUs. The required modifications to enable multi-rate simulation are discussed. A three-rate application example is presented in which a wind power plant is simulated in great details while the related power transmission system is simulated with a bigger time step. This multi-rate simulation is carried out on a regular workstation, the latest RT hardware platform for Hypersim. These regular PCs offer splendid RT performance and are affordable. However, they are limited in their computing resources and offer no scalability. Nonetheless, combined with multi-rate simulation, this low-cost solution can be used for a vast number of cases.