Fault Emulator Update

This week the Energy Technology Facility’s newest addition, a fault emulator, was moved into its permanent home and fastened down. The fault emulator is a tool that will allow ACEP researchers to create electrical faults in a controlled environment in order to collect data on the effects of faults in isolated electrical grids. This data will then be used to provide crucial information about the effects of these events on microgrids to managers of rural Alaskan communities as well as the quickly growing, billion dollar industry that supports them.

The ACEP designed and locally constructed fault emulator was paid for with funding from the United States Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) i6 Challenge Award. This highly competitive award ($1 million over three years) has been used to establish the Alaska Center for Microgrid Technologies Commercialization (ACMTC), which is operated out of ACEP’s PSI Program at UAF.

Office of Navy Research representatives examine the fault emulator installed adjacent to the ETF as PSI program lead, Marc Mueller-Stoffels, discusses the merits of the device.  Photo credit M. Frey, ACEP/UAF.