IEEE Electrification Magazine - June 2017 - 71

Full-Scale
Control Room

Real-Time
Digital Simulator

Power Amplifier
150 kW (1.2 MW)

LabGrid
with 21 Labcells

Online
Control/
Data

I/O
I/O

Models
Real World
SCADA
System

Power

Control Hardware
Test in Lab

Online
Data
Power

Blade Center
(Power Market/
Controllers)

Online Control/Data

Power Hardware
Test in Lab

Online Control/Data

Figure 8. The ICL system setup. I/O: input/output.

both dedicated energy storage and demand-side flexibility,
for example, from pumping, ice making, and desalination.
In terms of cost factors, the benefits of a truly modular
and adaptable control system are hard to quantify: The
main benefit derives from the minimization of engineering efforts every time a new component is added to the
system or whenever such system is deployed on a new
site. Cost drivers include the diverse interfaces, diverse
unit capabilities, unclear control possibilities, and future
extensions and operating configurations. On the other
hand, the vision promises improved system monitoring
capabilities and better resilience properties considering
the diversity of control resources.
Today, it is a unique research infrastructure for designing
and testing systems solutions for isolated and interconnected
local energy systems, designed as a test bed for advanced
control and communication concepts for power grids. The
current facility extends across multiple sites on the Risø
campus within an area of about 1 km2. A 400-V, three-phase
grid with a total of 16 busbars and 119 automated coupling
points serves as the electrical backbone of the facility and
allows a large variety of different grid topologies to be set up
by means of a central crossbar switch. When all cables are in
use, a maximum feeder length of up to 3 km can be
achieved. The grid can be connected to the campus distribution grid through one of several interconnection points, operated in island mode, or be split up into multiple independent
subgrids. A large variety of DER units can be connected at different points of the grid. These include two wind turbines,

three PV installations, a conventional (combustion engine)
generator, three buildings with controllable heating, vanadium redox-flow and lithium-ion batteries for storage, EV
charging posts and various other types of controllable loads.
Unit sizes range between 10 and 100 kVA. A back-to-back
converter allows controlled power exchange between SYSLAB and the campus grid and can be used for equipment
simulation or power-hardware-in-the-loop tests.
All equipment on the grid is automated and controllable by remote. Each unit is supervised locally by a dedicated computing node, which acts as a communication and
control gateway. The nodes are almost identical, and the
layout of the communication network does not put any of
them at the center of the network. This results in great
flexibility with respect to control architectures; standard
master-slave control concepts can be tested as well as
less traditional approaches such as controllers based on
peer-to-peer communication or multilayered hybrid control systems. This flexible system architecture can be
exploited for experiments with new control concepts for
remote microgrids, as well as for connected distribution
grids, providing a cyberphysical test bed for the validation
of novel coordination and control strategies.
With such capabilities, SYSLAB thus encourages the
departure from a component focus to a system focus. This
shift in focus encourages further the innovation of new
engineering tools that facilitated the process from development to deployment. This process includes early-stage
(H. Bindner et al. 2004) tools for evaluating technical

IEEE Electrific ation Magazine / j une 2 0 1 7

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - June 2017