Design and testing of custom FPAA hardware with improved scalability for emulation of smart grids

In this paper, the authors present work in the field of analog emulation of electric power system dynamics via field-programmable analog array (FPAA) technology. Specifically, they discuss development of a new emulation tool with increased modularity and operator density for analysis of larger power systems and smart grids. One innovative aspect of this work is the fact that it employs custom FPAA boards developed by researchers at The College of New Jersey and Drexel University. The work places emphasis on decreased prototype size, increased density of computational analog blocks (CAB´s), more effective FPAA interconnection scheme, and batch-mode FPAA configuration.