SimPowerSystems, now promoted under “Simscape Power Systems”, is a very useful and versatile power system and power electronic simulation software. Its main advantage is to be fully embedded into the Simulink software. The Simulink software is probably the most used simulation software for control systems.  Most car manufacturers use Simulink to test their systems and even to build actual car control software, using tools like Simulink Coder. The majority of readers of this article (most probably) have cars that actually runs Simulink-based controllers without being aware of it!

This Simulink integration makes SimPowerSystems very attractive for the simulation of power systems and power electronics because of the ease of controller design and connection to the electric part of the system.

I would like to add that I use SimPowerSystems as a reference for my own solver design since more than 10 years now because it is very accurate.

One noticeable disadvantage of SimPowerSystems may be its computational speed. With large power systems in particular, the state-space solver used by SimPowerSystems can become much slower than traditional solver based on the nodal admittance method, such as the ones used in EMTP-RV and PSCAD.

As part of Opal-RT Technologies, I developed a solver called State-Space-Nodal (SSN) which can solve this speed issue in SimPowerSystems. As the name say, this SSN solver is a nodal admittance based solver at its core and this is the main reason of the speed improvement over state-space methods. This is particularly important in real-time applications where SSN can make simulations with consistently low simulation time steps.

Finally, I would like to mention that SimPowerSystems as well as EMTP-RV and PSCAD belong in the category of Electro-Magnetics Transients (EMT) software and are designed to visualize voltage and current transients occurring during faults for example. Their simulation time step is in the 20 to 50µs range typically for this purpose. They are typically used in systems of less than 1000 busses, otherwise they would be really slow.

EMT simulation software are to be distinguished from Phasor Simulation software, often called Transient Stability (TS) simulation software. In TS simulation software, only the RMS values of voltage and currents, along with machine angles and powers, are computed using a time step of 1-10 milliseconds.  Because this time step is several order of magnitude superior to EMT methods, TS methods can run simulation of networks much larger than the EMT ones, even in real-time. Examples of TS softwares are DigSILENT, PSS/E, PowerFactory, ETAP and ePHASORsim (which is developed and sold by Opal-RT by the way). ePHASORsim is rated at 50000 busses in real-time and I am quite sure that other TS softwares can run much bigger cases because they don’t have this real-time constraint.

SIMULINK SIMULATION Time is not real time,it is having some step size,so,we can not predict the real time environment,which can be overcome by using RTDS.

In many cases we have to assume or delete some parameters for actual simulation.

Large power systems are difficult to handle in case of simulink.

Load flow study can not be done.

Advantage:

We can track the instantaneous wave shapes and make model of power systems.

It was a nice response! ..Thank you Saptarshi

Advantages:

1) I find Simulink modelling fun, whereas script coding is a bit of a drag/chore.

 2) Safety - I have never been electrocuted, or broken expensive equipment, using a Simulink model.

Disadvantages:

1) Most people talk about garbage in, garbage out (GIGO); but more damaging and more prevalent I think, is perfection in, perfection out (PIPO). A model is a model, i.e. a convenient representation of the world, and not the real thing.

2) Matlab/Simulnk Licenses can be expensive.

Thank u Dr Kennedy.. it was an interesting comparison!

Dear Ms Bagheri Tolabi,

As far as I know, the Simulink is useful for academic case studies and thus for practical purposes and especially for large-scale power systems, DigSILENT and PSS/E would definitely be better choices.

Regards,

Morteza Shabanzadeh

http://mortezash.blogfa.com/

Thank you Mr Shabanzadeh.. In addition, ETAP can be useful..

I fell the SIMULINK is good for the small power system problem. for for the large system. but the availability of the electrical and electronics component it help to create the small power plant. 

Simulink has only AC Faults such as earth fault. but these fault does not exist with the DC. 

Dr Chauhan , You mean DC faults haven't included in the simulink library blocks?

Simulink is a very nice simulation tool for complex systems. In particular for power systems is not the best options because the mathematical models of several power components are not very detailed. Another problem is the computation time, it is very large in comparison with PSCAD for EMTP type simulations or with PowerFactory for transient and phasor simulation.

I believe that Simulink has a very competitive advantage, is within matlab.

For EMTP type simulation, PSCAD and EMTP-RV are the best choices in my opinion.

It was a nice response! ..Thank you Dr Ramírez

Adding to the merit, any ideal device irrespective of ratings can be connected and simulated.

You can add past toolbox for MATLAB 

Dear Hajar, Simulink is very useful when you are looking for analysis/simulation at algorithmic level. There are many toolboxes available for different technical domains. To overcome the problem of expensive third party toolboxes, I've developed very affordable alternatives for various power converter topologies. For your reference below you find a link to a blog on my website which show how Simulink is applied for algorithmic analysis of a Power Factor Correction converter. 

http://www.zeonpowertec.com/Blog/files/archive-aug-2014.html

Thank you Mr Smeets..

It was interesting thanks

It depends on the objective of your analysis or study.... Different tools must be used for different purposes. For example, system studies are done for either steady-state or dynamic. Different tools apply in each case.....

SimPowerSystems, now promoted under “Simscape Power Systems”, is a very useful and versatile power system and power electronic simulation software. Its main advantage is to be fully embedded into the Simulink software. The Simulink software is probably the most used simulation software for control systems.  Most car manufacturers use Simulink to test their systems and even to build actual car control software, using tools like Simulink Coder. The majority of readers of this article (most probably) have cars that actually runs Simulink-based controllers without being aware of it!

This Simulink integration makes SimPowerSystems very attractive for the simulation of power systems and power electronics because of the ease of controller design and connection to the electric part of the system.

I would like to add that I use SimPowerSystems as a reference for my own solver design since more than 10 years now because it is very accurate.

One noticeable disadvantage of SimPowerSystems may be its computational speed. With large power systems in particular, the state-space solver used by SimPowerSystems can become much slower than traditional solver based on the nodal admittance method, such as the ones used in EMTP-RV and PSCAD.

As part of Opal-RT Technologies, I developed a solver called State-Space-Nodal (SSN) which can solve this speed issue in SimPowerSystems. As the name say, this SSN solver is a nodal admittance based solver at its core and this is the main reason of the speed improvement over state-space methods. This is particularly important in real-time applications where SSN can make simulations with consistently low simulation time steps.

Finally, I would like to mention that SimPowerSystems as well as EMTP-RV and PSCAD belong in the category of Electro-Magnetics Transients (EMT) software and are designed to visualize voltage and current transients occurring during faults for example. Their simulation time step is in the 20 to 50µs range typically for this purpose. They are typically used in systems of less than 1000 busses, otherwise they would be really slow.

EMT simulation software are to be distinguished from Phasor Simulation software, often called Transient Stability (TS) simulation software. In TS simulation software, only the RMS values of voltage and currents, along with machine angles and powers, are computed using a time step of 1-10 milliseconds.  Because this time step is several order of magnitude superior to EMT methods, TS methods can run simulation of networks much larger than the EMT ones, even in real-time. Examples of TS softwares are DigSILENT, PSS/E, PowerFactory, ETAP and ePHASORsim (which is developed and sold by Opal-RT by the way). ePHASORsim is rated at 50000 busses in real-time and I am quite sure that other TS softwares can run much bigger cases because they don’t have this real-time constraint.

Thanks Dr Dufour

Over all I am very satisfied with Simulink in power system simulation. What I found problematic is that phasor simulation cannot be trusted in an unbalanced  3-phase system analysis. Also if you are going to simulate a system with a large number of buses and switches I would double check the result in another simulator as Simulink can become numerically unstable in these scenarios.