Abstract: In this work the implementation of a real-time emulator operating under the principle of Power Hardware in the Loop (PHIL) is presented. The system developed is a great tool for the study of electrical anomalies such as harmonics in smart grids. The general structure of the emulator, control scheme, sensors, instrumentation and amplification stages are described, which provides flexibility in terms of power ranges, topologies and control techniques. The algorithms of control and execution of the simulation models in real time are implemented in the platform dSPACE DS1103. The results of the real-time emulation with purely sinusoidal voltages and with harmonic content are presented, which show excellent performance and versatility to analyze study cases with diverse loads; besides, smart grids with different topologies and non-linear loads.