Protecting smart grid equipment from serious faults and improving power transmission efficiency.

Analog Devices (ADI) (Korea Representative Director: Jaehoon Yang) announced a data acquisition system (DAS) that improves monitoring of smart grid equipment to protect equipment from serious system failures that can cause damage and increase the efficiency of power delivery to homes and businesses.

As electricity demand grows and renewable energy production expands, power companies must improve the scope, granularity, and accuracy of monitoring across multiple points across the distribution grid. Current data acquisition systems often require complex design work and costly integration beyond the needs of the application.

The new DAS supports class 0.2 measurement accuracy, enabling the development of faster, more sensitive and affordable fault detection equipment, helping protection relay operators minimize the high costs of repairing and replacing damaged components.

The AD7616 DAS integrates 16 channels of dual simultaneous sampling, eliminating the need for multiple components in high-channel-count applications, simplifying design and reducing system cost. The AD7616 operates from a single 5 V supply and provides ±10 V, ±5 V, and ±2.5 V true bipolar input signal ranges while sampling at throughputs up to 1 MSPS per channel pair.

Furthermore, the DAS's input architecture eliminates the need for costly external protection circuits or external signal conditioning. Furthermore, on-chip filtering and high input impedance (1 MΩ) eliminate the need for driver operational amplifiers and external bipolar power supplies. The high-accuracy on-chip ADC delivers a 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), achieving Class 0.2 measurement accuracy and producing more accurate, reliable, and time-consistent data. Using on-chip oversampling mode, the SNR can be increased to 92 dB.

The AD7616 DAS is suitable for a variety of power distribution applications, including relay protection in low-voltage distribution units and feeder terminals. The new DAS can also be used in multiphase motor control and industrial instrumentation applications.