EPFL Scientists Fit Power Grid On 4 mm Chip!

EPFL’s electronic branch (ELab) is developing a chip that can manage the power grid system for efficient distribution of electricity to a town or a city. The first demonstration of this technology will be done in the forthcoming EPFL Middle East research days (June 22-23).   The device will be having a dedicated hardware that will run a thousand fold faster than the contemporary computer software working on the normal computers. In the future, energy production will be a combination of several unconventional energy sources that will reduce the carbon footprints of the power sector. To manage such variations in input energy to the generators and give satisfactory outputs will be a challenge that will be faced by the power grid networks. On-chip power chips having greater processing speed could well be an answer to this problem. The first prototype of this IC has just been developed and can be implemented as a power grid for a town in a couple of years. The chips could become available for large scale usage in about five years.

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The research team at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanneis is led by Maher Kayal. He believes that the small size and enhanced processing scheme will help this chip to handle generator problems, power line faults and defects, risk of power cuts, etc. in real time at much cheaper rates. The problem with many power grids is the delay faced when there is a sudden power failure. However, the new technology can sense such moment beforehand and predict a power cut when the system is made to working beyond its capacity. So these superfast chips can actually anticipate the trouble and find an optimum solution even before the incident takes place.

The speed and easy installation are not the only two features that make this chip an awesome replacement for the conventional power grid. The on chip power grids can easily manage the variable nature of the non conventional energy sources like sunlight, wind, tidal energy, etc. The supply from these sources cannot be planned in advanced as they depend on the weather conditions. The algorithm used by the chip for managing these resources sounds similar to the concept of the smart grids. The smart grid technology aims at reducing the economical and ecological impact of energy production without reducing the consumption by using different electronic technologies to get optimized electricity generation. The technology is economically feasible. The production cost of these chips won’t be more than a few Swiss francs. The chip could be custom programmed and configured as per the need and scale of the town. The research is partially funded by the firm ABB which has filed for patenting this novel idea. This out of the box technique seems to be a right step in the direction of sustainable growth and a greener future.

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