Power Electronics and Drives: Simulation to Implementation in Minutes: A Novel Implementation Tool for Power Engineers

Power electronics and drives play a crucial role in various industrial applications, and therefore its control systems have become more significant since the turn of this century in the developing world. A power engineer must first control the system, design and simulate its model, and then implement it to verify the simulation results. Lucas Nulle Servo Drive (LNSD) system is a powerful tool for power engineers, researchers, professors, and students to enhance research efficiency. The system comprises self-commuted converter circuits with insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), which incorporate control and measurement of power electronics parameters. The operation and recording of measurements can be done using virtual instruments. On the other hand, the system can operate without a computer. It can also be expanded through a MATLAB interface that allows to upload MATLAB projects onto a power electronics system and test them out using real hardware components in minutes. The steps involved in the project are first creating a model using LN MATLAB Toolbox, simulation of the model, generating code for target hardware, and measurement of data using LN scope. The results can then compare with those obtained in the simulation. This article briefly introduces the LNSD system and the two research studies: automatic control and novel model predictive control (NMPC) of variable speed fault-tolerant synchronous servo motor drive using MATLAB/Simulink.