Kestrel EMT documentation

Kestrel EMT is a free electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation software for electrical power systems developed by Arnada Engineering (the trade name of Daigle Grid Engineering LLC). It is bundled with KPlot, a general purpose plotting tool which may be installed as a standalone standalone package. Kestrel EMT and KPlot are free for personal, educational or commercial use. For more information, see LICENSE.txt.

Features include:

• Ability to execute Python and MATLAB code from within a simulation and interface with circuit components.

• Modern, intuitive ribbon interface

• Export directly to HDF5 file format for additional analysis in MATLAB or Python

• Powerful plotting of Kestrel EMT results alongside other files, such as PTI .out files or .hdf5 files from MATLAB.

• Use external data to program arbitrary current sources

• Sophisticated plotting capabilities, including time domain, frequency domain, spectrogram, and phasor plots

The Windows version is available for download at https://arnadaeng.com/. The Linux version is currently available by request only.

Contents:

• Background on EMT
• Installation
• Kestrel EMT
  • Program Structure
  • Components
  • Creating Simulations
  • KCF File Format
  • Hotkeys
  • Executing Simulations
  • Working with Simulation Data (HDF5 Files)
  • Python Setup
  • Running KestrelCLI on Linux
• KPlot
  • KPlot Hotkeys
  • File Formatting
• Change Log
  • 2026.4
  • 2025.11
  • 2024.8
  • v0.94
  • v0.92
  • v0.91
• Component List
  • Circuitry
  • Math
  • Other