FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The federal government has asked engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas to develop purely electronic systems to make the nation’s power grid more reliable and efficient. Silicon-carbide, solid-state equipment will replace outdated and obsolete electro-mechanical devices such as those that failed to localize the 2003 blackout in the Northeast United States, the largest and most catastrophic power failure in the history of the country.

 “We have to limit potentially catastrophic events so that people don’t get hurt and equipment doesn’t get destroyed,” said Alan Mantooth, UA professor of electrical engineering and director of the newly formed National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission. “These events can also severely damage the nation’s economy and threaten national security.”

Mantooth and three other UA electrical engineering researchers -- Juan Balda, Fred Barlow and Aicha Elshabini -- received $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s GridWorks Initiative to create and operate the new national center. The center’s researchers, including faculty and graduate students, will design, test and package the electronic systems for future commercial use in the nation’s power grid.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Tennessee, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech received funding for similar research.

Mantooth said government leaders chose the UA team because of the researchers’ expertise in advanced power electronics and longtime investigation of silicon-carbide, a semiconducting material that is more durable and faster than materials currently used in the power grid. For the past decade, UA electrical engineers have developed and packaged silicon-carbide systems for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the defense industry. The UA team was one of the first to investigate the material’s application to power technology.

Mantooth said silicon-carbide is a superior material for several reasons other than its strength and ability to respond quickly to power interruptions. Its properties allow an extremely high voltage capability. It is also a good thermal conductor, which means it can operate at very high temperatures and does not require extra equipment to remove heat. Mantooth emphasized that this quality can reduce overall mass and volume on a power grid.

For the national power transmission center, researchers will create mathematical models of silicon-carbide devices to simulate the design of large systems. Those devices will then be rigorously tested and packaged. Packaging involves creating protective coatings and enclosures to prevent the material from breaking down when subjected to high voltages and currents and when interacting with air and water. 

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

Mantooth said the 2003 blackout, which caused billions of dollars in lost revenues and was triggered by fallen branches because of a storm, should have been limited to a local area in Ohio. The fallen trees caused huge surges of current, which mechanical devices known as fault-current limiters should have squelched, or grounded, to prevent the surges from traveling beyond the local area. However, these mechanical switches did not function quickly or properly and thus created a cascading effect, or chain reaction of blackouts.

Even with the electro-mechanical switches functioning properly, the entire process is too slow, Mantooth said.

“It actually happens in the blink of an eye, but it’s not as fast as a computer,” said Mantooth. “We want to get the electric system of our country able to react like a computer can react -- at electrical speeds, not mechanical speeds. The catastrophe of the blackout in the Northeast wasn’t the trees that fell on the power lines in Ohio. It was the cascading effect. None of the built-in protection devices reacted quickly enough or properly to limit the problem to a local level. And so you have the entire Northeast grid in disarray. That’s a reliability problem, and you just can’t have such things. What you need is faster-acting, more-reliable, purely electrical systems, what we refer to as solid-state solutions.”