OpenETran

Electric power system transient simulator

During the period from 1990 through 2002, EPRI funded the development of a Lightning Protection Design Workstation (LPDW), which was used by many utilities to assess the lightning performance of distribution lines. Since about 2002, this program has not been available. EPRI decided to release the simulation kernel of LPDW under an open-source license (GPL v3), so it may be incorporated into IEEE Flash and other projects.

OpenETran can presently simulate multi-conductor power lines, insulators, surge arresters, non-linear grounds, and lightning strokes. It efficiently calculates energy and charge duty on surge arresters, and iterates to find the critical lightning current causing flashover on one or more phases. It is also suitable for use in substation insulation coordination. Capacitor switching, TRV, and other applicaitons may be added.

EPRI originally had permission to use code from the Numerical Recipes book in LPDW. These routines have been removed in favor of GSL.