Power system innovation promoted by the smart grid vision provides large opportunities for the development of a sustainable energy supply infrastructure. However, the increase in system complexity arises the need for innovative planning and operation paradigms to guarantee the optimal and secure grid management. Nonetheless, suitable testing approaches are also required to ensure reliability, safety and proper system integration of innovative smart grid solutions and technologies before deployment. In this work practical issues in the design and operation of advanced smart grid test infrastructures are addressed. Both aspects are analyzed with particular emphasis on test facilities including power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) systems. The minimal requirements along with an architectural classification of the elemental laboratory equipment are suggested for the suitable facility design and effective operation. A set of fundamental operational use-cases are formulated for the practical and straightforward applicability of advanced testing approaches especially based on PHIL technique. The assessed design and operational aspects are evaluated on an existing smart grid laboratory equipped with a PHIL system together with typical full-scale smart grid components. Particularly, a number of test-cases are performed to evaluate the major operational aspects with an existing PHIL system. Results show the potential and the actual implementation issues when performing PHIL tests in case of practical applications
