Lessons learned in porting offline large-scale power system simulation to real-time for wide-area monitoring, protection and control

At Hydro-Québec, power system studies are mainly done with offline electromagnetic transient simulation tools and real-time simulation is typically reserved for hardware-in-the-loop studies related to HVDC and compensation system commissioning. However, there is a growing internal need to pursue large-scale power studies incorporating physical systems to explore wide-area monitoring, protection, and control strategies: large power systems must then be ported from offline software to the real-time environment. The current paper presents lessons learned over the years about the offline to real-time porting process. As Hydro-Québec is involved in simulation tool development, software-related issues and challenges are presented and discussed. Details are then provided regarding the porting process of a large-scale power system required for wide-area control explorations. Prior to waveform comparison and performance assessment, modeling details and required modifications on the original simulation schematic are presented. In closing, electromagnetic transient modeling best practices and tricks to facilitate porting offline simulations to real-time are reported here to help users increase the efficiency and performance of their offline simulations and prepare them for real-time operation.