Weekly Brief

What is the Role of FPGAs in Smart Grids?

By Utilities Tech Outlook | Monday, February 17, 2020

FPGAs have been a significant influence on the transformation of conventional grids into smart grids.

FREMONT, CA: Energy infrastructure is currently in the quest for better performance and increased reliability and safety. This is making electric utilities turn to smart grids. The smart grid enhances electric grid control, helps automate and manage growing electricity demands, and allows two-way communication between service providers and customers. Smart grids also improve power quality, make transmission efficient, allow quicker rerouting when outages occur, and reduce peak demand. Continuous innovations are required to power and sustain the aspects of efficiency and economics, and many technological interventions have stepped in to facilitate the same.

Advancements in integrated circuits, sensors, and wireless communication have resulted in the use of wireless sensor networks for smart electricity grids. Since these networks need effective integration, onboard processing, and limited power consumption, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) seem to be the perfect solution for an optimal balance between performance requirements and flexibility. FPGA allows reprogramming. The modular architecture of the FPGA-based remote monitoring system's primary function includes sensing, processing, and communicating. With transducers, a signal-conditioning circuit to acquire the required parameters is also a part of the system.

The evolution of FPGAs has resulted in smart grid components that strike a balance between processing prowess, energy demands, and flexibility. Implementation of a remote monitoring system for smart grids utilizing FPGA-based wireless sensor network technology can help utilities intensify security performance. By implementing the sensor node in FPGA, even complicated tasks can be performed on a sensor node, resulting in a dynamic and configurable wireless sensor network system. These systems help the utility companies to monitor and control the loads at peak hours so that the power supply can meet the demand of consumers and without causing any power wastage.