Hardware-in-the-Loop Validation of AC/DC Service Restoration including industrial IED and Communication Protocols

New hybrid AC/DC distribution grids rely on innovative protection and reconfiguration solutions that need to be validated in a realistic automation scenario. This paper presents a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) testbench that includes protection relays, standard IEC communication protocols, and a microservice-based software stack, for interfacing an AC/DC Service Restoration (SR) microservice with the automation system of the distribution grid. In the testbench, a SR microservice recently developed by the authors is assessed via computation time and network latency. The results demonstrate, based on the developed communication infrastructure, the applicability of the proposed SR microservice in distribution management systems of medium voltage grids. In addition, the proposed solution allows to effectively identify possible integration problems, in terms of interoperability among microservices and devices, before field implementation.