CURENT LTB
Established in 1963, the R&D 100 Awards is the only S&T (science and technology) awards competition that recognizes new commercial products, technologies, and materials for their technological significance that are available for sale or license. The R&D 100 Awards, celebrating the program's 60th Anniversary this year, has long been a benchmark of excellence for industry sectors as diverse as telecommunications, high-energy physics, software, manufacturing, and biotechnology. This 2022 R&D 100 winner is listed below, along with its respective category.
Category: Software/Services
Developers: CURENT Research Center
United States
Product Description:The CURENT Large Scale Testbed (LTB), from CURENT Research Center, is the first of its kind to provide a virtual electric power grid for researchers to experiment with closed-loop controls and algorithms. Research and application ideas can be quickly and seamlessly integrated for verification in this virtual power system. Without CURENT LTB, researchers have to either write a set of additional ad-hoc scripts or manually link multiple tools. Then, they can form a manually operated closed-loop environment or have to run an "open-loop" study without feedback. The CURENT LTB behaves precisely like a virtual power grid with closed-loop capability such that researchers can test their algorithms or controls (as modules or components in the overall CURENT LTB loop) for fast testing and prototyping. Everything is automated with one or a few button-clicks instead of tedious manual operations. The CURENT LTB also integrates power system simulation with communication network emulation to accurately simulate a modern cyber-physical power system with both power flow and information flow. The CURENT LTB is the only open platform available for cyber-physical power system simulation.
Developers: CURENT Research Center
United States
Product Description:The CURENT Large Scale Testbed (LTB), from CURENT Research Center, is the first of its kind to provide a virtual electric power grid for researchers to experiment with closed-loop controls and algorithms. Research and application ideas can be quickly and seamlessly integrated for verification in this virtual power system. Without CURENT LTB, researchers have to either write a set of additional ad-hoc scripts or manually link multiple tools. Then, they can form a manually operated closed-loop environment or have to run an "open-loop" study without feedback. The CURENT LTB behaves precisely like a virtual power grid with closed-loop capability such that researchers can test their algorithms or controls (as modules or components in the overall CURENT LTB loop) for fast testing and prototyping. Everything is automated with one or a few button-clicks instead of tedious manual operations. The CURENT LTB also integrates power system simulation with communication network emulation to accurately simulate a modern cyber-physical power system with both power flow and information flow. The CURENT LTB is the only open platform available for cyber-physical power system simulation.

The LTB architecture overview