Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop for Model-Less Emulation of PM Electrical Machines

Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) is gaining increasing attention as a technology enabling rapid testing and development in power electronics and variable speed drive applications. When Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines (PMSMs) emulation is used within the PHIL platform, the electrical and mechanical model of the machine must be solved in real-time by a Digital Real-Time Simulator (DRTS). The real-time resolution of the electrical model is one of the challenging aspects of PHIL implementation of PMSMs. This paper shows that the electrical model can be removed and accurate emulation of the PMSM can still be achieved. Such a solution allows to reduce the development time of the PHIL platforms and its cost. In this work, a theoretical analysis is carried out to compare the novel Model-less solution to the state-of-the-art implementation of PHIL. The theoretical work is supported and validated through experimental results, confirming the fairness of the proposed approach.