Embedded Control Module For Smart Electric Power Grid Automation
Published On: April, 4, 2022 By: Mark Shaw | Updated: April 6, 2022 by Greg Sheridan
Equipment designed for the management of electric power grid infrastructure is increasingly critical to meeting the need for clean and reliable electric power. High power electronics at the level of multi-megawatt switching, generation, load balancing, storage, motor drives, and other distribution systems demand sophisticated computing power in their embedded controllers. With these complex requirements and the low quantity manufacturing typical of these large and high-cost systems, designers have resorted to using existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) industrial subsystems for these embedded controllers. This “rack-and-stack” approach has dominated controls designs for high power electronics for some time, despite the persistent limitations to size, reliability, and long-term product support. Custom controls, on the other hand, that would be technically superior, allowing highly tailored features and compact integration, are passed over because of their reputation for being prohibitively expensive and slow to engineer and manufacture. Luckily, this is no longer the case, leveraging open-source projects and technologies like System-in-Package (SiP), it is now possible to design custom control systems that are significantly smaller, more reliable, and have better long term support while also being as cost effective and timely to deploy as the traditional rack and stack solutions.
The InnovaTM SCM21001 system-on-module (SoM) from Silicon Power Corporation was developed as an embedded computing platform specifically for electric grid automation applications. The SCM21001 SoM boasts a real-time DSP subsystem, featuring a Texas Instruments dual core digital signal processor (DSP) and an Intel field programmable gate array (FPGA), as well as a Linux based management controller, featuring an Octavo Systems’ OSD3358 SiP. This single SoM provides the ability to optimize the DSP system leveraging traditional DSP and FPGA techniques alongside management and monitoring software providing modern communication protocols and user interfaces.
Designing a custom SoM solution instead of using the standard COTS approach allowed tight integration of application specific components such as power, analog sensor conversion, and actuator drives. Its small form factor and ability to be conduction cooled, no fans, allowed it to be deeply embedded into high reliability applications.
The SOM’s design also significantly eases the software development cycle. Separating the real-time DSP functions out from the control and communication aspects of the system removed the need for a real time operating system. Then using the OSD3358 System-in-Package for the control and communication processor enabled the team to leverage the vast resources of a very active opensource software community, enabling the quick construction of a modern control system.
The initial design and development program for the SOM was an exceptional success story, coming in on time and under budget. Available opensource development platforms for the OSD3358 allowed software development to begin before a SOM was available. The ease of design with the SIP produced rapid success, with the sophisticated features of the SOM all fully functional in the first prototype. Software development and system hardware design were able to transition to the SOM from the development platforms with no disruption to workflow. In the first application, a bank of 32 simultaneously sampled 16-bit analog-to-digital converter channels was fit directly under the SOM with outstanding results in solution size and performance.
These design results would simply not be possible with a rack-and-stack approach. The compact design enables system form factor and performance options that would be impossible without a custom solution. The Octavo Systems OSD3358 SIP takes the work out of many of the details that previously limited the option to pursue a custom approach, while it also improves the overall size advantage in a meaningful way. Applied as a component or as a reference design, the SOM demonstrates that custom controls design is once again a practical and cost-effective option for high power electronics.
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The Innova SCM21001 SOM was designed and manufactured for Silicon Power Corporation by Allied Component Works, LLC, a member of the Octavo Systems partner network. The companies regularly collaborate in the design of InnovaTM Power Solutions products.