DIgSILENT GridCode

New rules and grid codes to connect generators to the grid are emerging worldwide.

In every country or region, the operators responsible for the safety and reliability of the power system have established different requirements to connect renewable generation systems to transmission and distribution networks. Such requirements are highly dependent upon the characteristics of individual power systems.

DIgSILENT has developed and released a new test verification tool called DIgSILENT GridCode v1.0, in response to the need to verify whether a wind farm, solar plant, or any other generator is compliant with local Grid Code requirements on basis of unit tests executed. Some of the functions can be verified off-line or on-line.
DIgSILENT GridCode is already being used by manufacturers and laboratories during field testing of wind turbines to verify compliance.

Among many others, DIgSILENT GridCode compliance verfication functions are:

Verification of generator response during voltage dips and supervision of power plant non-disconnection, according to the selected grid code or other international standards (Spain-REE, Germany-E.ON and MV, England. NGC, France-RTE, IEC-61400-21 Ed.2,others)
Other requirements from classical power quality assessment, such as the flicker level according to IEC-61000-4-15 or harmonic emission levels according to IEC-61000-4-7 up to most modern methods in power quality assessment for renewables incl. IEC-61400-21.

The application can be automated and integrated into existing SCADA systems, but can also run on a workstation as an off-line verification tool.

DIgSILENT GridCode v1.0 key features

Data Visualizer to plot data series and graphs
GridCode Compliance to check the compliance with given requirements. The following Grid Codes are supported:
- Spain: REE P.O 12.3 according to PVVC part, both particular and general procedures.
- Germany: E.ON Netz 2006 High and Extra High Voltage
- UK: NGC Grid code
- Denmark: EnergyNet (voltage dip shape)
- IEC 61400-21 Ed 2 (voltage dip shape)
Model Validation to check if simulation results (e.g. generated by PowerFactory) and test result are matching
File Editor to post-process data files and speed up the analysis
Flickermeter IEC 61000-4-15 to assess flicker emission levels
Harmonics IEC 61000-4-7 to assess harmonics levels
Toolbox IEC 61400-21 Measurement and assessment of power quality characteristics of grid connected wind turbines. to calculate instantaneous flicker, flicker coefficients, flicker during switching operations, to assess current harmonic emissions, inter-harmonics and higher frequency component emission levels, observation of the evolution in time of DFT components.
Phasors Viewer to visualize the evolution in time of spatial phasors (fundamental and sequence components, line and phase measurements)

Additional tools have been developed to improve post-processing for managing files from different measurement equipments and to allow users to create and develop their own grid code:

GridCode Editor to edit the requirements of the selected grid code
File Editor to post-process data files and speed up the analysis
Re-sampling to resample files to a higher or lower sampling frequency
File merging to synchronize and bring together files at different sampling rates (wind speed file + instantaneous voltage-current file)

DIgSILENT GridCode v1.0 Demo Version

The Demo Version of DIgSILENT GridCode v1.0 is a limited commercial version available for evaluation during a period of 30 days.

To request a demo version of DIgSILENT GridCode v1.0 please click here and fill in the form.

The Demo Version will be installed in your computer with the following capabilities:

Complete visualization of main menu and execution of independent Grid Code modules (LVRT analysis, harmonic analysis, flicker...)
Execution and computation available for predefined input files.
Possibility of modifying the calculation parameters (rms rate, thresholds, etc.)
Grid Code editor is fully available; the voltage dip shape can be modified, active power and reactive power requirements in zones, etc. The resulting grid code conditions can be checked with the demo files.
Editing options as copy/paste graphs, export option to csv format, and other powerful edition capabilities.