Network analyzer (AC power)

Not to be confused with Network analyzer (electrical).

From 1929[1] to the late 1960s, large alternating current power systems were modelled and studied on AC network analyzers (also called alternating current network calculators or AC calculating boards) or transient network analyzers. These special-purpose analog computers were an outgrowth of the DC calculating boards used in the very earliest power system analysis. By the middle of the 1950s, fifty network analyzers were in operation.[2] AC network analyzers were much used for power-flow studies, short circuit calculations, and system stability studies, but were ultimately replaced by numerical solutions running on digital computers. While the analyzers could provide real-time simulation of events, with no concerns about numeric stability of algorithms, the analyzers were costly, inflexible, and limited in the number of buses and lines that could be simulated.[3] Eventually powerful digital computers replaced analog network analyzers for practical calculations, but analog physical models for studying electrical transients are still in use.

  1. ^ Thomas Parke Hughes Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930 JHU Press, 1993 ISBN 0-8018-4614-5 page 376
  2. ^ Charles Eames, Ray Eames A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age, Harvard University Press, 1990 0674156269, page 117
  3. ^ M.A. Laughton, D.F Warne (ed),Electrical Engineer's Reference Book (16th Edition), Elsevier, 2003 ISBN 978-1-60119-452-7 pages 368-369