Design, implementation and validation of a web-based dynamic simulation platform for pumped storage hydropower plant control systems

The safe and stable operation of pumped storage hydropower (PSH) plants is heavily reliant on the correctness of their Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. Conventional testing methods often fall short in validating the complex, system-wide control logic under comprehensive operational scenarios. To address this, this paper proposes an innovative web-based dynamic simulation test platform featuring a microservices architecture and a zero-client, Simulink-like graphical modeling environment. The platform employs non-linear physics-based models (e.g., rigid water column and dynamic pump-turbine models) to create a high-fidelity virtual replica of a PSH plant. The core contribution lies in enabling engineers to seamlessly translate control logic into executable models without low-level programming. A case study evaluating a governor control algorithm validates the platform’s efficacy. Results demonstrate a highly accurate tracking performance with a maximum error of 0.008 p.u. under normal conditions, and successfully identified a critical overspeed vulnerability (1.42 p.u.) during an injected actuator fault scenario. The platform is further validated through benchmarking against MATLAB/Simulink (trajectory agreement above 99.8%), a quantitative performance characterization (3.1 ms step time, real-time execution scalable to 20 concurrent sessions), a closed-loop hardware-in-the-loop experiment, and a user evaluation yielding a System Usability Scale score of 84.2. This work concludes that the platform provides a robust, risk-free environment for comprehensive pre-commissioning testing, significantly mitigating field deployment risks.