Experimental Multi-site Testbed for Advanced Control and Optimization of Hybrid Energy Systems

Abstract: This paper presents a hybrid energy system (HES) experimental testbed developed at the University of Vermont to support prototyping and validation of advanced control and optimization strategies for grid services. The platform integrates hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation with a reconfigurable set of kilowatt-scale assets, including solar photovoltaic (PV), battery storage, an electrolyzer as a controllable load, and grid-tied inverters. A unified monitoring and communication architecture supports real-time data acquisition, model validation, and control implementation. The testbed's capabilities are demonstrated through a controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) experiment in which a battery system participates in PV power smoothing.