About GRIDRA
A browser-based engineering workspace for power systems.
GRIDRA is an engineering platform built around one idea: engineers, researchers and students should be able to plan, simulate and learn — without installing anything, without a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts anymore, without guessing at hidden assumptions.
Scope
What GRIDRA is — and what it isn't.
GRIDRA is
- A place to learn power systems from first principles, in three languages
- A workspace for first-pass engineering estimates, with every assumption on the page
- Free to use, with no account — and your data never leaves your browser
GRIDRA is not
- A replacement for certified study software such as PowerFactory or PSS®E
- A signed-off engineering study — results support a decision, they don't replace the responsible engineer
- A substitute for the standards themselves — lessons explain IEC and IEEE concepts, the standard text governs
Why we started
Good tools shouldn't require a software license and a local install.
Power systems engineering sits at the center of the energy transition — renewables, smart grids, high voltage technology, AI-driven analytics. The field is moving fast, and the everyday tools engineers and students reach for haven't always kept up.
Serious planning tools traditionally mean expensive software, a local install, or a spreadsheet someone built years ago that nobody fully trusts anymore. That's a real barrier — for a student trying to connect theory to practice, and for an engineer who just needs a fast, reliable answer.
GRIDRA exists to close that gap: real engineering tools that run in a browser, with every assumption shown, plus the learning content to actually understand what they're calculating — built transparently, alongside a growing community of power systems engineers.
Focus areas
What we focus on.
Power Systems
Generation, transmission and distribution fundamentals.
Smart Grids
Digitalization, automation and intelligent grid control.
High Voltage Engineering
Insulation, protection and high voltage equipment.
Renewable Energy
Integrating wind, solar and storage into the grid.
Grid Stability
Stability, resilience and power quality challenges.
Power System Economics
Electricity markets, pricing and grid operation costs.
How we work
The principles behind GRIDRA.
Technical first
Every tool, lesson and result is grounded in real engineering — no hype, no fluff.
Assumptions shown, never hidden
Every tool shows exactly what it assumes and how it calculates — a result you can check, not a black box.
Built for the next generation
Students and early-career engineers get real tools, not an afterthought.
Three languages, one curriculum
English, German and Turkish versions of the same lessons and tools, kept in step — because the energy transition is global, and so are the engineers working on it.
How we validate
Show the math, not just the answer.
A number with no way to check it is just a guess with a nice font. Every tool on GRIDRA is built the same way underneath, regardless of what it calculates:
Checked against published references
The IEEE 39-bus power flow matches MATPOWER's published solution within 1e-3 p.u.; fault currents match hand-solvable symmetrical-component cases; generator, governor, exciter and stabilizer dynamics are transcribed from ANDES's own published dataset, not re-derived from memory. Where a lab has no published results to compare against, such as the GRIDRA Sense Lab with its synthetic signals, the page says so and the engine is checked against hand-worked cases instead.
Every assumption stated, not hidden
Where a model simplifies — a straight-line flux path, a single loop impedance angle, a curve fitted to one specific context — the tool says so on the page, and says what would change if that assumption didn't hold.
Automated tests, not just a working demo
Every calculation engine ships with its own test suite, checked against hand-worked or published results — so a later change can't silently break a number that used to be right.
Your data stays yours
Uploaded files and tool inputs are processed entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and nothing is stored unless you explicitly save it.
Sources & terminology
Built on references you can look up.
Lessons draw on the standard textbooks — Kundur, Glover, Grainger & Stevenson, Kirschen & Strbac, Kuffel — and on IEC and IEEE/CIGRE publications, with reports from IEA, IRENA and NREL for current figures. Simulations are checked against MATPOWER and ANDES reference data.
Where IEC and ANSI/IEEE practice use different terms for the same idea — BIL versus rated lightning-impulse withstand voltage, for example — the goal is to name both, not to silently pick one.
Who's behind it
One person, building in the open.
GRIDRA is an independent project — not a company, not a university lab. It's built and maintained by one person, an Electrical Engineering Master's student based in Dortmund, Germany, who wanted the tools this field actually needs to exist somewhere open and free to use.
Connect on LinkedInSpotted an error?
Engineering content should be challenged. If a lesson, a number or a reference looks wrong, send a message — corrections are made in all three languages.
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