News

Universal Controller Reference Design for the Smart Grid

September 02, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

Smart Energy Instruments (SEI) announced today at World Smart Energy Week the first Smart Grid Universal Controller reference design. OEMs can now build a single Intelligent Electronic Design (IED) with multiple functions that delivers unmatched precision and accuracy to measure and communicate current, voltage and power quality characteristics. Together with SEI's patent-pending time synchronization technology, the universal controller provides operators with superior grid visibility.

By making minor hardware modifications, OEMs can also offer a family of high-performance IEDs, such as a Phasor Management Unit (PMU), Power Quality Meter (PQM), Faulted circuit indicator (FCI), Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) and advanced Protection Relay. All with common parts that will dramatically lower the Bill of Materials (BOM) and support costs.

The SEI Universal Controller reference design is based on the SGS1010A Analog Front End (AFE) and the SGS1010D System on Chip (SoC), with 2 central processing unit (CPU) cores and 16 digital signal processors (DSPs), offering performance that is unmatched in the industry. SEI's DASLR(tm )technology is incorporated into the chipset, providing large-spectrum dynamic response, extreme accuracy, very high-speed processing, low-latency and maximum resolution, all of which are essential attributes of advanced IEDs. A full suite of software libraries, example applications, and an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) are also available for OEMs to integrate into the end-product of their choice.

"The industry has needed a new approach to IED development for some time", said SEI CEO Jeff Dionne. "Incumbent brands are now able to deliver superior functionality at a much lower cost and new market entrants can provide innovative solutions in response to new requirements, such as renewable energy mandates. This is an exciting time to be in the Grid Automation market."

SEI will be demonstrating its Universal Controller Reference Design at World Smart Energy Week in Osaka, Japan from September 2 - 4 in booth 7-6. SEI offers field applications engineering (FAE) services and design-in consultation for its SGS1010A, SGS101D and universal controller reference design.