FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas’ National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission has received a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Award worth $370,000. This money will be used to acquire specialized power electronic equipment for a state-of-the-art test facility.

The new equipment will enable the 6.5 megawatt test facility to perform variable frequency (50-400 Hz) and variable voltage (up to 15 kV) testing in a highly reconfigurable and programmable manner unlike any other facility in the world.

“The National Science Foundation’s support is a tremendous lift to our program and moves our plans forward in establishing a world-class power electronics test facility for use by ourselves, other universities, and businesses,” said Alan Mantooth, director of the center. Mantooth also serves as an electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas and holds the 21st Century Chair in Mixed-Signal IC Design and CAD.

Renewable energy sources and faster protective devices will play greater roles in the future in order to meet the ever increasing electric power demand in a reliable manner.

“Power electronics has become an enabler of the above technologies. Having a testing facility for power electronics, like NCREPT, not only allows us to perform state of the art research work but places us at the forefront of the research in this field,” said Juan Balda, associate director of the center and electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas. “The NSF funds enable us to have this programmability and flexibility in our testing facility sooner than we originally envisioned. It is very encouraging for our team that NSF has recognized the merits of our research work.”

Researchers from the center will develop prototypes of advanced power electronics systems for applications in the power grid including both solid-state protection devices and energy storage. The center will also develop advanced packaging solutions for high current, high voltage power semiconductor devices and applications.

"This award helps to develop NCREPT as a nationally and internationally recognized research laboratory," said Roy McCann, associate director of the center and associate professor in electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas. "This also improves our ability to recruit and retain the best students for conducting research in the area of renewable and secure energy resources.”

This new test facility, currently under construction, will be located at the University of Arkansas’ Engineering Research Center in south Fayetteville. The lab is a two-story high-bay facility convering 7,000 square feet. It will be capable of testing power systems up to 6.5 megawatts. The programmable loads will also avoid enormous energy waste by enabling the output energy to be recirculated. As a result, even at full power, only kilowatts of power will be drawn from the power grid.

The test facility will consist of several transformers, many circuit breakers and regeneration drives that are connected in a highly reconfigurable manner enabling many types of application scenarios including distributed generation (wind, solar, etc.) and protection devices. The regeneration drives acquired by this grant funding will be manufactured by Baldor Electric Co., based in Fort Smith, Ark. 

The center is funded as part of the federal government’s focus on research and development to improve technology for the nation’s power grid. Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2003 and created the GridWorks Initiative in response to the massive blackout of the Northeast United States in 2003.