Multifaceted Functionalities of Bridge-Type DC Reactor Fault Current Limiters: An Experimentally Validated Investigation

With the ongoing expansion and interconnection of electrical power systems, alongside the rapid proliferation of renewable distributed generations (DGs), the short-circuit extent in the power grid is experiencing a significant rise. Fault current limiters (FCLs) have been introduced in an effort to address this issue, ensuring the robustness and...

Design of a Gallium Nitride DC-DC MPPT Converter for Bipolar DC Microgrids

The use of DC microgrids in combination with photovoltaic (PV) energy generation sources results in higher efficiencies by avoiding AC to DC conversion. Moreover, bipolar DC grids allow for more system flexibility and increased reliability at the cost of an additional conductor when compared to unipolar DC. However, maximum power point tracking ...

Modulation of a Bidirectional DC-AC Converter for an AC Grid Interface in Bipolar DC Microgrids

As renewable energy sources and DC energy storage continue to increase in modern power systems, the power electronic converters required to interface them with existing power grids are also rapidly increasing. This is resulting in increasing amounts of the total power exchanged on the grids being converted between DC and AC. Additionally, the...

Control for Bipolar DC Microgrid and DC/DC Bidirectional Converter in Energy Access Context

Rural electrification remains a significant challenge for engineers, given its intricate relationship with multiple issues, including geographical constraints and underdeveloped infrastructural provisions. As a result, with the development of Solar Home Systems (SHS) and direct current (DC) microgrids, DC systems for energy access have emerged...

Virtual Impedance Control for Load Sharing and Bus Voltage Quality Improvement

This paper proposes a virtual impedance reshaping strategy to share active and harmonic power while promoting the PCC voltage quality. Moreover, the suggested method is resilient to cyber-attacks and immune to communication interruption and delay. Furthermore, it significantly reduces the communication burden. Experiments verify the...

Surrogate DC Microgrid Models for Optimization of Charging Electric Vehicles under Partial Observability

Many electric vehicles (EVs) are using today’s distribution grids, and their flexibility can be highly beneficial for the grid operators. This flexibility can be best exploited by DC power networks, as they allow charging and discharging without extra power electronics and transformation losses. From the grid control perspective, algorithms for...

An Adaptive Control Strategy for Dynamic Response of an Autonomous DC system

The dynamic behaviour - steady-state and transient - of the DC Microgrids during power disturbance can affect the system’s general performance. A hybrid combination of energy storage devices with slow frequency response, like a Fuel Cell, and with a fast dynamic response, like a Super-Capacitor, provides an improved dynamic response to stabilise...

Isolated DC/DC Converters for DC Distribution Grids in Rural Electrification

Roughly 840 million people, predominately from rural communities in sub-Sahara Africa, still lack access to electricity. The direct current (DC) microgrid is an emerging grid infrastructure that meshes efficiently with DC based technology such as photovoltaics, batteries, consumer electronics, and electric vehicles. This characteristic of DC...

Power Flow Decoupling Controller for Triple Active Bridge Based on Fourier Decomposition of Transformer Currents

This paper proposes a power flows decoupling controller for the triple active bridge converter. The controller is based on a full-order continuous-time model of the TAB converter derived using the generalized average modelling (GAM) technique. GAM uses the Fourier series expansion to decompose the state-space variables into two components,...

Quantifying the Benefits of a Solar Home System-Based DC Microgrid for Rural Electrification

Off-grid solar home systems (SHSs) currently constitute a major source of providing basic electricity needs in un(der)-electrified regions of the world, with around 73 million households having benefited from off-grid solar solutions by 2017. However, in and of itself, state-of-the-art SHSs can only provide electricity access with adequate...

Control of a DC Microgrid

The growth of distributed Renewable Energy share in the total electricity production as wells as technological advancements in power electronics and increase of DC loads, point towards the development of the DC microgrid (DCMG) concept as a valid model for future energy systems especially for operations and locations where the existing grid...

Optimal Management and Control of Solar PV Attached Electricity Storage According to Energy Price Signals

End – consumers have become more active in the effort to achieve secure operation of the electricity grid. Demand response offers a set of solutions allowing consumers to achieve normalised load profiles and increase the balance between energy generation and consumption. Storage technologies and renewable energy sources integrated in microgrid...

Characterization of Series Arcs in LVdc Microgrids

This paper provides an empirical study on series arc behavior in low voltage dc microgrids. The response of an R-L-C dc microgrid abstraction towards series arcs is studied experimentally for varying grid inductance, dc voltages, load capacitances and load currents. In order to account for the stochastic nature of arcs, experiments are...

Power Balance Control of DC Microgrids

Control techniques for DC microgrid.

Detection, characterization and extinction of electric arcs in DC Systems

Advancements in power electronics has sparked the adaptability of dc systems in varied application fields. The phenomenon of electric arcing in such dc systems, arising due to the absence of zero crossing of current during normal operation, has impeded the widespread proliferation of dc-based technologies in the market. Considering the...

PV architectures for DC microgrids using buck or boost exclusive microconverters

DC microgrids can connect directly dc renewable energy sources with increasing amount of dc loads. In this paper it is looked for possible architectures for integrating PV panels into dc microgrids, by means of microconverter strings. Three topologies are considered, featuring only buck microconverters and only boost microconverters, since they...

DC Microgrids in the Netherlands

The Dutch electricity system is changing and subject to multiple developments. Important developments are the increasing share of distributed energy resources (DER?s) such as solar panels and the increasing use of electronics like computers and televisions. While DER?s produce DC (Direct Current) power, electronics consume DC power. Nevertheless...