Development of a real time simulator based on ATP-EMTP and sampled values of IEC61850-9-2

•Real time simulator for relay testing based on ATP-EMTP and IEC61850 is developed.•The minimum simulation time step achieved was 69 μs.•A real time simulator was achieved with low budget based on personal computer.•The real time simulator sends digitally the calculated information in real time through Ethernet.•The communication process requires for its execution between 20 and 40 μs.

This paper addresses the implementation of a real time simulator based on an existing electromagnetic simulating program called ATP-EMTP. The simulator is developed to stream sampled values on an Ethernet network using the protocol IEC61850-9-2. This implementation is done on a general purpose PC. The minimum simulation time step and the maximum sample rate achieved were 69 μs and 240 S/cycle respectively. The main components of the development as well as the evaluation of the performance of the simulator for different cases are described in this paper.