The modular multilevel converter(MMC)real-time simulation platform can test the control system

which is of great significance to engineering practice. This paper proposes an efficient real-time simulation model of MMC based on RT-LAB. A 21-level MMC dual terminal system is built in MATLAB/Simulink to verify the accuracy and correctness of the proposed MMC model under different operating conditions in comparison with detailed MMC models. In contrast to the simplified model developed by OPAL-RT

the proposed MMC model takes less resources of the central processing unit and can simulate an MMC system on a larger scale. With the state space node algorithm

the proposed model can solve more than 601-level MMC dual terminal system in real-time simulation. Through the real-time simulation platform

the experiment of hardware in the loop is implemented by getting connected with the external physical controller. The experimental results show good applicability of the proposed model. This work is supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No. 2015XS08)

National Key Research and Development Program of China(No. 2016YFB0900903)and National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 51607065).