This month's Special-Report focus is on grid power and, in the current era, that topic invariable calls for discussions centered on various smart-grid concepts, many and broad. The section's leadoff article, IEC 61850 increases grid reliability, is an interesting case study from ABB describing how engineers using IEC-61850-compliant gear were able to reduce feed-switchover time for an industrial energy user by 55% and convert a marginally performing system to a reliable one. Grid security is a topic that piques even the interest of the popular press, albeit all too often in forms more appropriate to television crime dramas than to sober discussions of technologies, public policy, or the intersection of the two. So, I was intrigued by the article, Securing the life cycle in the smart grid from Maxim Integrated Products, which demonstrates how extensive smart-grid security must be to ensure a safe, robust, and reliable electric-energy supply. Given the variability of operating conditions for grid-connected inverters, the notion of safe, robust, and reliable supply also demands thorough proving of PV inverter designs. Test today your PV inverter for tomorrow from DNV KEMA provides useful insight into the issues and challenges related to such testing. Of course smart grid doesn't hold a monopoly on smarts or ingenuity in the power sector—a fact amply demonstrated by five other articles in this issue. For example, our cover story, Meeting safety standards for A/V and IT from Power Integrations, introduces a clever way to ensure user safety while meeting stringent standby-power goals. Performance vs power in off-chip DDR SDRAM from Synopsys explains how intelligent memory control can allow applications to set the balance dynamically. How high-TJ TRIACs benefit your applications from STMicroelectronics and Integrated Current Sensing from On Semiconductor both demonstrate how innovative components can give you additional design flexibility and, in many applications, save energy simultaneously. Finally, Power electronics based on GaN MISHEMPTs from EpiGaN provides an update to developments in GaN on Si processing and a preview of the switching device of tomorrow. Pretty smart. Power Systems Design
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