One Hour Ahead Computation of Large-Scale Electric Power Network Transport Capability

该奖项是根据运输业工程探索性研究(ETI)项目征集颁发的。该研究涉及开发一种可扩展的专用混合计算体系结构，包括细粒度并行模拟处理和数字控制以及可重构性，以加速大规模电网传输能力的计算。这项为期一年的探索性计划的研究将沿着三条线同时进行。首先，将对解决稳态潮流问题所需的核心模拟计算单元进行设计、模拟、制造和实验测试，以确定其潜在的精度和计算吞吐量。其次，通过仿真对并行模拟求解方法进行发展和完善。第三，将启动可扩展架构的工作。该架构应支持数字可重构性以及解决大规模网络问题所需的控制、通信和数据存储。如果这项研究成功，最终可能会开发出一种专门的芯片组或加速板，它可以与工程工作站连接，并可以执行稳态功率流方程的近乎实时的求解。这样的加速板将类似于被广泛用于加速计算密集型计算机图形任务的专用显卡。

This award is made under the Exploratory Research on Engineering the Transport Industries (ETI) program solicitation. This research involves the development of a scalable special-purpose hybrid computing architecture comprising fine-grained parallel analog processing and digital control and reconfigurability to accelerate the computation of large-scale electric power network transfer capacity. The research in this one-year exploratory program will proceed concurrently along three lines. First, the core analog computational units needed to solve the steady-state power-flow problem will be designed, simulated, fabricated, and tested experimentally to determine their potential accuracy and computational throughput. Second, the parallel analog solution method will be developped and refined through simulation. Third, work on a scalable architecture will be initiated. The architecture should support digital reconfigurability as well as the control, communications, and data storage needed for the solution of large-scale network problems. If this research is successful, it could result eventually in the development of a specialized chip set or an accelerator board that would interface with an engineering workstation and could perform a near real-time solution of the steady-state power-flow equations. Such an accelerator board would be something like the specialized graphics cards that are widely for used for accelerating compute-intensive computer graphics tasks.