Enhancing Large-Scale Power Systems Simulations through Functional Mockup Unit-based Grid-Forming Inverter Models

Abstract

New York State (NYS) faces significant challenges inmeeting the Climate Act’s bold goals of 70% renewableenergy generation by 2030 and total decarbonization of theelectric grid by 2040. Extensive simulations are requiredto assess the impact of numerous inverter-based resources(IBRs) deployed to the large-scale NYS power grid, aimingto evaluate their dynamic behavior and mitigate anynegative interactions with their control schemes. However,the modeling efforts required are huge and thecomputational burden of large-scale simulations isextensive, and often limited by the capabilities of domain-specific tools. This work addresses these limitations bydeveloping a Functional Mockup Unit (FMU) of Grid- Forming(GFM) Inverters for IBR control and integrating them withan electromechanical phasor-domain power system solver. Theproposed FMU facilitates the simulation and parametricstudies needed to analyze large- scale IBR usage withsignificantly improved manual modeling and computationalefforts. The paper details the process of developing andFMU model for GFM IBRs, including all relevant controlloops implemented in the Modelica language and FMUintegrated in OPAL-RT’s ePHASORSIM software. Our FMU modelsare used to successfully deploy and study the impacts of upto 6, 200+ MVA from IBRs on the 5000-bus NYS transmissionsystem.