This paper deals with the development of a complex measurement system for the online control of a laboratory scale DC grid located at "Politehnica" University of Bucharest. This has been achieved by making use of various communication methods among different modules, like DC source, energy meters, server, controllable "load computers", digital oscilloscope and multimeter. PHP and an open source database have been used on the server-side for implementing the external communication, thus reducing the software requirements of the client's computer down to a common web-browser. The internal communication that occurs through various protocols like TCP/IP, ModBUS/TCP and RS232 has been mediated by the database, using LabVIEW Internet Toolkit and the open source .vi library LabSQL. Additionally, the use of an interesting reverse engineering concept helped extracting the communication protocols from the instruments' proprietary applications, thus making possible the full integration of measurement modules into a unique system. The final result is a homogenous measurement system within the laboratory scale DC grid, controllable through a secure, reliable and minimum-requirement online application. web-based communication; remote control; LabVIEW; DC networks;

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The ability of monitoring a laboratory scale power system is crucial for research and educational purposes. This paper proposes the development of a low-cost real-time platform for monitoring a laboratory scale power system. The design and development of this novel monitoring system is based on a TMS320F28335 microcontroller of Texas Instruments. The microcontroller reads voltage and current measurements from several locations of the laboratory scale power system, processes these measurements and then sends the results to a personal computer. The user can monitor in real-time the operation of the power system through the implemented graphical user interface. The developed system can achieve an accurate and real-time monitoring of a laboratory scale power system which is particularly useful in the educational process for understanding the main power engineering practices. Moreover, novel algorithms regarding the stability, the state estimation, the operation and the monitoring of power systems can be experimentally validated by utilizing the proposed monitoring system. The demonstration of the proper operation of the prototype monitoring system is available online as a video.