Semi-Custom HIL Simulation of a Three-Phase Power Inverter

Nowadays, the usage of renewable energy has significantly increased, driving the development of power electronics topologies with improved performance. Simulation plays a crucial role in the advancement of these topologies by enabling safe and rapid testing of systems. Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation has proven to be a valuable tool in achieving these objectives, allowing control to be tested under conditions similar to its operation in the physical system. Commercial HIL simulation systems are expensive, while custom systems entail lengthy development time and require expertise in complex programming languages. Given the aforementioned challenges, this article proposes the HIL simulation of a three-phase inverter using a semi-custom HIL simulation scheme with Lab ViewFpga as the development language and a CRIO-9067 card as the hardware platform. The obtained solution time is 750 ns, and the error between the real converter and the HIL simulation percentage error is less than 2.2%, considering a full load current of 3 A in each phase. These results demonstrate that the developed system can be reliably used for HIL simulation, offering a promising solution to the challenges posed by commercial and custom HIL approaches.