Name:______________________________ ID:_______________

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

POWER LECTRONICS 304/604 LABORATORY

LABORATORY 1 - PSIM INTRODUCTION

Equipment
PSIM 9.0

Procedure
1. Open the PSIM software from Start > Program > PSIM.
2. Create a new PSIM schematic under the menu, File > New.
3. An empty schematic entry will appear as in Figure 1.

Menu

Toolbox

Element
Toolbox
Figure 1: PSIM layout.

Figure 2: Schematic and parameter settings.

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Name:______________________________ ID:_______________

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

4. Connect the circuit as shown in Figure 2 using demo version of PSIM software.
5. Select a component from the “Elements” Toolbox.
6. Place the component in the schematic entry. Right click to rotate the component.
Press Esc to exit from the selection.
7. Connect the components using wire by clicking this icon .
8. Run the simulation by selecting “Run Simulation” icon .
9. The window switches automatically to result screen after simulation is completed.
Plot the waveforms of Vs and Vo on screen#1.

10. Add one more screen by selecting “Add Screen” icon . Plot Is and IL on

screen#2 using “Add/delete curve” icon .

11. Add screen#3 to plot IR & Ic.
12. Now you should obtain a screen as shown in Figure 3. The result is plotted from
zero to 0.5s. In this circuit transient occurs at the beginning of simulation and
reaches steady value at around 0.2s.

Transient Steady-state

Screen#1

Screen#2

Screen#3

Figure 3: Circuit transient and steady-state responses.

Measuring rms, average, min & max

13. To measure rms, average, min & max values of the signals, use axis setting icon
to show the steady period of the waveform. All measurement must be
performed at steady-state period of the simulation. It is very useful to show a
complete cycle of waveform when detail measurement is required such as in FFT
analysis. 3-5 cycles are preferred in most application. To return to the total
simulation result, click on the Re-draw icon .

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Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

14. Click on the measurement icon to activate measurement tools. Use one of

these icons to measure average, rms, max, or min

value of the steady-state waveform.
15. From the waveforms in simulation results, record the following values:
i. rms value of Vs and Is.
ii. average value of Vo, IL and IR.
iii. Peak value of Is.

Measuring ripple

16. To measure the ripple of a signal, the difference between max & min point of the
waveform as shown in Figure 4 is the peak-peak ripple value. Record the peak-
peak ripple of:
i. Vo
ii. IL

Figure 4: Measuring the ripple of a signal.

Measuring THD

17. Display the source current, Is waveform in the steady-state range.

18. Obtain the Total Harmonic Distortion as shown in Figure 5 from FFT analysis
using icon .

Figure 5: FFT analysis.

19. Record the peak value of the fundamental component, Is(1) and convert to rms
value, Is(1)(rms).
20. The THD formula is given as in Eq.(1) Calculate the THD of source current.

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Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

I s2( rms) − I s2(1)( rms)

THD = ×100%
I s2(1)(rms )
Eq.(1)

Measuring power factor

PSIM provides pf meter in it library. It can be found in
Element
Other
Probes
VAR/pf meter.

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Name:______________________________ ID:_______________

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Simulation

1. Connect the circuit as shown in Figure 6.

2. Sinusoidal Voltage Source, Vs
a. Peak Amplitude 100
b. Frequency 50
c. Phase Angle 0
d. DC Offset 0
e. Tstart 0
3. Set the delay angle, α.
Thyristor Triggering Signal, GS1
a. Frequency 50
b. No. of Points 2
c. Switching Points 0 1
Thyristor Triggering Signal, GS2
d. Frequency 50
e. No. of Points 2
f. Switching Points 180 181
4. Load
a. Resistor 10Ω
5. Simulation Control
a. Time step 2e-005
b. Total time 1
c. Print time 0.9
d. Print step 1

Figure 6: Controlled Rectifier with resistive load.

6. Plot the waveforms of Vs, Is, Vo and Io.

7. Simulate the circuit with different firing angle, α and complete the result sheet.

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Name:______________________________ ID:_______________

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Additional Information
Simulation Control Setting in PSIM 9.0 Demo version

1. PSIM Demo version has limitation on:

i. Number of display/meter to maximum of 8.
ii. Total result plotted on the screen is limited to 6000 points.

2. In this laboratory, all circuit has been designed to run with demo version. However,
high resolution result is not possible. If the simulation result being plotted is more
than 6000 points, a warning will be displayed.

Figure 1: Warning message

3. Increasing the Print step in Simulation Control may overcome this problem with
the price of lower resolution of the waveform.

4. Another way is by plotting the steady-state period of the waveform only, as long as
transient period is not the aim of the analysis. This can be done by increasing Print
time. Instead of from zero the result will be plotted from, let say, 400ms to 1s in the
example below.

Increase

Increase

Figure 2: Simulation control settings.

Example: Setting of Simulation Control parameters

1. Identify the highest frequency of any sources in the circuit.

2. The maximum time step is one tenth of it period by default:

e.g. voltage source of 50Hz, gives 20ms period. Time step is 1/10 x 20ms = 2ms.

3. Estimate the time at which simulation reaches steady-state. For example 0.4s.
Therefore 1s should give steady-state result. So the Total time is 1s.

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Name:______________________________ ID:_______________

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

4. Using maximum resolution Print step is set to 1.
5. Only showing the last 5 cycles of waveform by setting the Print time as:

Print time = 1s – (5cy x 20ms) = 1000ms – 100ms = 900ms

6. The result displayed is not a smooth waveform.

Figure 3: Results with large time step.

7. To fully utilize the 6000 points provided by PSIM, increase the resolution of
simulation by reducing Time step:

Time step = 5 cycles / 6000 points = 100ms / 6000 = 16.66 us ~ round up to 20us.

8. Now the result has 100X higher in the resolution.

Figure 4: Refined waveform with adjusted time step.

Prepared by: D. C. Riawan & C. V. Nayar (2007)

Revised by: P. Y. Lim (2009)