RTDS Technologies is proud to announce that the RTDS Simulator will be at the heart of a pioneering new initiative led by TU Delft that will result in the world's largest interconnected real-time power system simulator. The project, which will be commissioned in 2027, represents an unprecedented investment in the future of power system research.

The new facility will in part support the UTOPYS (Understanding Large and Complex Power Systems) program, a national consortium in the Netherlands that recently received €16.5 million from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to develop the world's largest research infrastructure for real-time energy system studies and digital twins. These efforts are also supported by the Dutch Ministry of Climate and Green Growth (KGG), and TenneT, the transmission system operator.

As power systems become increasingly complex – with higher levels of renewable generation, power electronics, distributed energy resources, complex large loads such as data centers, and cyber-physical interactions – researchers need tools capable of studying these emerging challenges safely and at scale. The massive laboratory infrastructure at TU Delft is being created to advance understanding of future energy systems, enabling investigation of topics such as grid stability, advanced control strategies, cyber resilience, market interactions, and next-generation energy architectures.

The RTDS Simulator, the world standard in real-time electromagnetic transient (EMT) power system simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing, will play a central role in bringing this vision to life. The Simulator will enable TU Delft and partnering institutions to model electrical networks in detail, investigating contingency scenarios – like cascading outages – and their solutions in the controlled safety of the laboratory environment. The RTDS Simulator has been used this way for decades by power system leaders, de-risking new technologies and grid operations worldwide, but never before at this scale.

“We already have considerable experience with real-time simulation in our Electrical Sustainable Power (ESP) lab,” said Professor Peter Palensky, head of TU Delft’s Electric Sustainable Energy department and principal investigator of the UTOPYS project. “The RTDS Simulator is a key technology for de-risking the radical change that is needed to operate secure, resilient, and sustainable power systems for the next hundred years and beyond. This new project will enable a digital twin of the Dutch grid at national scale.”

This large-scale simulation will also be connected to TU Delft’s Control Room of the Future Technology Centre, directed by Dr. Alex Stefanov, where it will support the goal of enhancing the cyber security of the digitized grid.

This announcement marks the beginning of an exciting journey that will set a precedent for studying large-scale power systems in real time, in Europe and beyond. At RTDS Technologies, we look forward to supporting TU Delft and its partners in de-risking our future power systems.