R.S. Balog, J.A. Pappas
Texas A&M University, Texas, United States
Keywords: Power Quality, Electric Power Distribution, Electrical Grids, Smart Grid, Energy and Resilience
Reliable, high-quality electricity is required by DoD and civilian installations, especially critical infrastructure. However, today’s aging civilian and military electrical grids are based on old concepts, designs, and technologies and are pushed to the limits of their operation. DoD installations and tactical platforms, national security facilities, and civilian critical infrastructure increasingly depend on sensitive electronics, advanced communication systems, and power electronics-based equipment. Poor power quality can severely impair mission capability, compromise system performance, degrade equipment lifespan, and damage equipment. This poster provides a briefing on GUARD - an innovative grid-edge power electronic based technology that can be retrofitted at existing facilities or provisioned in new construction and adjusts automatically to correct poor power quality at its source. The hardware and control system enable GUARD to simultaneously supply or absorb reactive power and mitigate harmonic distortion, optimizing power quality in real time to dynamically respond to changes in the sources and loads. As a dual-use technology it leverages economies of scale and established market channels.