How far is the GPU technology from practical power system applications?

The deployment of smart grid technologies in the large-scale power system makes its operation and control computationally intensive. One promising solution for handling the substantial computational loads is to apply the affordable high performance computation platform, such as Graphic Processing Unit (GPU). This paper evaluates the potentials and challenges of applying GPU to a commercial power system simulation and analysis software product. The results of the exploration demonstrate that GPU has significant potentials in improving the performance of realistic power system applications. However, to integrate GPU functionalities and fully unleash its powerful computation capability, the power system software requires re-architecture, which involves considerable efforts and could be the major obstacle preventing GPU from widely applications in the power industry.