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Abstract—The current energy scenario has introduced several The power rating for these scenarios can be ranged from
challenges to be solved such as the efficient electrification of small consumer applications (around watts) to the power grid
the oil and gas applications, the integration of clean energy applications where very high-power applications are needed
generation, the use of efficient high-power and energy storage
systems and the electric vehicles development. The energy in- (around hundreds of megawatts or gigawatts). Power elec-
dustry and the electrical providers have to face the problems tronics plays a crucial role as provider of the technology to
introduced by the integration of renewable energy systems in improve the efficiency and stability of the systems.
terms of reliability and stability of the power grid. The grid
has to be robust and efficient in terms of reduced losses. In this II. T HE P OWER G RID
way, for instance energy distribution systems based on the HVDC
topology are being installed all over the world. On the other hand, Currently, the power grid is continuously changing being
it becomes extremely important to use energy storage systems in adapted to fulfill minimum requirements in terms of nominal
order to stabilize and improve the efficiency of the power systems power, stability and reliability [2], [3]. Talking about oil
using ultimate generation batteries, ultracapacitors, hydrogen and gas onshore and offshore substations, power electronics
based systems and mechanical systems, just to mention a few. medium-voltage converters drive compressors and pumps for
On the other hand, the electrical vehicles (hybrid or pure
electrical) need high performance power electronic systems to use in gas treatment plants, re-injection plants, export gas
drive efficiently the power. This paper reviews briefly the current compression stations, etc. These compression and pumping
scenario where power electronics converters are being applied. solutions (usually from 1 to 100 MW) contribute to safer, more
In the manuscript, the main focus moves towards the energy reliable and cost-efficient processing.
distribution systems, the renewable energy sources, the energy On the other hand, the increasing demand of energy of the
storage systems and the electric vehicle applications, reviewing
the different alternatives and topologies, already as industrial companies and housing leads to install new power plants or
products or still as research lines in the academia. buy the energy to neighbor regions or countries. This fact
leads to implement a energy distribution grid which has to be
I. I NTRODUCTION decentralized allowing the interconnection of power systems
Among the different electronic topics, power electronics is a from different regions. This multiple interconnection between
discipline with very specific issues clearly different from other different power grids improves the stability and reliability of
areas such as analog, digital or RF, where the main objective is the overall energy generation and distribution system.
to process an information. On the other hand, solid state power In addition, the hazardous nuclear waste, the highly critical
electronic systems deal with the electric energy conversion. It fossil fuel world energy dependency, the global warming effect
is a relatively recent technology because its first steps can be and the CO2 emissions of the coal and fossil fuels also drive
dated in the mid 50’s with the commercialization of the SCR. to develop new and clean energy generation sources. The
However, its effects on our lives are everyday more and more main objective of these new systems is to generate electricity
clear leading to an important reduction in economical cost, efficiently with a minimum impact in terms of waste. The
size and increase of performances of the energy systems [1]. renewable energy sources have contributed in this sense in a
The non-stop development of new and more efficient power fundamental way at the expense of introducing an stochastic
semiconductors and the use of advanced control techniques, behavior of the power grid due to the non constant presence
implemented in modern digital microprocessors, has made of the energy source. In this way, the integration of renewable
possible many of the desirable characteristics of modern power energy sources in the grid has lead to the development of a
systems. Today important markets can be found in areas as decentralized distributed energy system with multiple energy
diverse as: industrial, commercial, residential, transportation, generation systems but at the expense of making critical the
utility, aerospace and military among others. One possible stability of the grid.
classification could be done taking into account three main The modern distributed structure of a power grid can be seen
scenarios and is presented in Table I, where the main appli- in Fig. 1. This structure presents a high meshed network, high
cations, benefits of applying power electronics and the salient integration of renewable energies an and adequate connection
requirements are presented. between other grids. This new distribution grid concept solves
the typical problems of the classical structure of the power be easily raised using transformers [20]. Nowadays, this issue
grid by using power electronic converters [4]. is still very important and power electronics are helping to take
advantage of each kind of energy (AC and DC) depending
III. E NERGY T RANSPORTATION AND D ISTRIBUTION
on the connection distance and environmental issues (DC
S YSTEMS
connection needs less area to be installed and is normally
More than a century ago, Edison and Westinghouse (this one used in submarine lines). In this way, the necessary efficient
using Tesla’s patents) were working hard on DC or AC elec- interconnection of different nature distributed generation sys-
trical energy respectively. In that time, finally AC distribution tems can be achieved by different power electronic converters.
network was demonstrated superior because it achieves less Modern power electronics converters are helping in bringing
distribution losses in large distances because the ac voltage can
TABLE I
M AIN APPLICATIONS , BENEFITS AND REQUIREMENTS OF POWER ELECTRONICS
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Geothermal
Housing applications Solar Energy Marine/Fluvial Energy Wind Energy
Energy
Renewable
Energy Systems
Solar
Thermal PV Solar Wave Tidal Wind
Roof PV Roof Plants Thermal Energy Energy Hydroelectric Energy Geothermal
Maximum 6 MW per
50 kW 250 MW 370 MW 150 kW 256 MW 14 GW 720 MW
nominal power Turbine
Technology Gearless,
↑ Power Density ↑ Nominal Power ↑ Robustness ↓ Development
trend - Offshore,
↑ Efficiency ↑ Efficiency Under Storms cost
↑ Power
transmission using wind turbines with multi-pole machines reliability and poor MPPT.
and connected to the grid using full back-to-back converters • String or multistring inverters usually for residential ap-
(currently two-level or three-level topologies in the next future) plications (less than 5kW). In these cases, each string
will lead to a new generation wind turbines. has its own converter so the MPPT can be obtained in a
About solar energy, the continuously decreasing prices for better way. In addition, the modularity is higher so the
the PV modules and the strong support of the governments to reliability and the fault tolerant capability are improved.
push this technology lead to consider photovoltaic and solar • PV systems where each PV panel has its own module
thermal energy as important actors in the present and future inverter commonly used for low power applications (less
renewable energy market. The global total installed power than 500W). This configuration enables optimal MPPT at
of solar PV was roughly 70 GW at the end of 2011, to the expense of increasing the cost.
be compared with just 1.5 GW in 2000. Over the past five Finally, other renewable energy sources such as the wave
years (2006-2011), solar PV has averaged an annual growth energy and the tidal power plants are being the focus of
rate of over 50% (for instance, from 40 to 69.3GW during researchers all over the world. There are currently several
2011) but PV generates today a few percent of total yearly prototypes and power plants installed and the feasibility of
electricity production. Germany is the leader of this energy these technologies will be proven in the next decade. It is
sector accounting for almost 36% of the global market with expected that tidal energy will become an important source
25GW installed followed by Italy (12.7GW), Japan (4.9GW), and South Korea has planned to build in the next years several
US (4.4GW), Spain (4.2GW) and China (3GW). In 2011 the power plants all in the multiple-hundred megawatts range [8].
growth has been mostly concentrated in a few countries like
Italy (from 3.5 to 12.7 GW), China, UK, France and US. Step V. E NERGY S TORAGE S YSTEMS
by step larger photovoltaic power plants are being constructed
Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) are becoming more and
achieving nowadays a nominal power up to 250 MW (Agua
more important in the power utilities and transportation fields.
Caliente Solar Project in USA).
Traditionally the utilities have been using large and concen-
The output of the PV panels is a DC voltage and the trated facilities for storing the energy (pumped hydro), but
existence of a power converter is required to generate an output modern smart grids require the use of numerous distributed
AC voltage. So, there is a big market for PV inverters with ESSs using different technologies [9]. The utilities take ad-
different topologies (see Fig. 4). In general, there are three vantage of the storage capacity to shave energy consumption
possible configurations: peaks, to help with the grid stability assisting in the frequency
• Series and parallel connection of PV panels and a three- control and to assist to the energy arbitration process, storing
phase central inverter. This configuration is common for the energy when is cheaper and delivering it when is more
the PV plants (power range 10-250kW or even more) and expensive. The intrinsic discontinuous character of renewable
gives high efficiency and low cost at the expense of low energies can be tamed by the use of ESSs.
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2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar
DFIG
Gearbox Grid
AC AC
DC DC
Reduced-capacity Converter
a)
AC AC
DC DC
Grid
Gearbox SCIG Full-capacity Converter
WRSG
PMSG
b)
Fig. 3. Configurations for the integration of a wind turbine in the electrical grid: a) Double-fed induction generator (DFIG) and a reduced-capacity back-to-
back converter. b) Electrical machine (wounded rotor induction generator (WRIG), Squirrel-cage induction generator (SCIG) or permanent magnet synchronous
generator (PMSG)) and a full-capacity back-to-back converter.
Module
Inverter
DC
AC
DC DC
DC DC DC
DC DC DC
Central String
Inverter AC
AC Inverter AC AC
Single-Phase
DC AC Bus
Multistring AC
Single-Phase Inverter
3-Phase Grid
AC Bus
Single-Phase
AC Bus
a) b) c) d)
Fig. 4. Configurations for the integration of a PV generation system: a) Series and parallel connection of PV panels and a three-phase central inverter. b)
Series connection of the PV panels forming a string and individual inverters per string. c) Multistring inverter formed by several DC/DC converters and a
central inverter. d) Module inverter dedicated to each PV panel.
In the transportation field, the ESSs are gaining visibility peak shavings.
in road transportation in pure electric or hybrid vehicles. The
railroad industry has taken advantage of the electrical drives Power Electronics Converters play an important role as
for many years, and systems with braking energy recovery enabling technology for the connection of ESSs to the power
capacity are being used to increase the energy efficiency and grid or to the motors/generators used in transportation systems,
as in many cases the ESS stores the energy in the form of a
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Pumped
Vanadium redox flow TESS Compressed air 8
hydro
Voltage [kV ]
1000
Sodium sulfur 0 (a )
300
V2G
Lead acid -8
100 0 0 .005 0 .01 0.015 0 .02 0.025 0.03
Ni-Cd
8
Voltage [kV ]
Utility scale applications
30 Li-Ion
Time(min)
0 (b)
10 Flywheels SMES
-8
3 0 0 .005 0 .01 0.015 0 .02 0.025 0.03
8
Voltage [kV ]
1
EDLC 0 (c)
0.3
-8
Transport applications
0 0 .005 0 .01 0.015 0 .02 0.025 0.03
0.1
0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 Time [s]
Power(MW)
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