This paper reviews the power electronic applications for wind energy systems. Various wind turbine systems with different generators and power electronic converters are described, and different technical features are compared. The electrical topologies of wind farms with different wind turbines are summarized and the possible uses of power electronic converters with wind farms are shown. Finally, the possible methods of using the power electronic technology for improving wind turbine performance in power systems to meet the main grid connection requirements are discussed.

A Review of the State of the Art of Power Electronics for Wind Turbines

The Kalman filter (KF) has received a huge interest from the industrial electronics community and has played a key role in many engineering fields since the 1970s, ranging, without being exhaustive, trajectory estimation, state and parameter estimation for control or diagnosis, data merging, signal processing, and so on. This paper provides a brief overview of the industrial applications and implementation issues of the KF in six topics of the industrial electronics community, highlighting some relevant reference papers and giving future research trends.

/pdf/industrial-applications-of-the-kalman-filter-a-review-tqdmwc4feq.pdf

Industrial Applications of the Kalman Filter: A Review

Development of alternative energy sources has become a necessity as fossil energy resources are declining. At the same time, energy demand is rapidly increasing, putting the world on the verge of a global energy crisis. Moreover, the extensive use of conventional energy sources is polluting the environment and causing global warming. On the other hand, wind and other renewable energy sources are viable and clean alternatives to fossil fuels. Low operating cost and extensive availability make wind one of the most advantageous and effective renewable energy sources. This paper provides an exposure to the necessity for deployment of renewable energy sources and the worldwide installed capacity of wind power as well as a review of various wind technologies in conjunction with their applications and devices of operation. Furthermore, this paper discusses the cost of electric generation in wind power plants as well as the economic and environmental policies that advocate the installation of wind energy systems.

Wind energy: Trends and enabling technologies

This paper presents an overview of the state of the art control strategies specifically designed to coordinate distributed energy storage (ES) systems in microgrids. Power networks are undergoing a transition from the traditional model of centralised generation towards a smart decentralised network of renewable sources and ES systems, organised into autonomous microgrids. ES systems can provide a range of services, particularly when distributed throughout the power network. The introduction of distributed ES represents a fundamental change for power networks, increasing the network control problem dimensionality and adding long time-scale dynamics associated with the storage systems’ state of charge levels. Managing microgrids with many small distributed ES systems requires new scalable control strategies that are robust to power network and communication network disturbances. This paper reviews the range of services distributed ES systems can provide, and the control challenges they introduce. The focus of this paper is a presentation of the latest decentralised, centralised and distributed multi-agent control strategies designed to coordinate distributed microgrid ES systems. Finally, multi-agent control with agents satisfying Wooldridge’s definition of intelligence is proposed as a promising direction for future research.

https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/190879836/C_Users_Thomas_Documents_UNSW_PhD_Research_Paper_Review_Control_for_Microgrids_with_Distributed_Energy_Storage_Systems_Draft_Final_160612_Review_MA_MG_ES.dvi.pdf

Control Strategies for Microgrids With Distributed Energy Storage Systems: An Overview

Battery versus hybrid power sources performance is examined in the manuscript. Passive, semi-active and fully active battery–ultracapacitor hybrids show obvious superiority over battery only powered pulsed current loads. Passive hybrid is the most simple and cheap arrangement, however its uncontrolled nature results in several drawbacks during the operation. On the other hand, the fully active hybrids achieve superior performance at the expense of two DC–DC converters and the corresponding control circuitry. The trade off between the topologies is the semi-active hybrid, employing only one DC–DC converter and attaining a compromising performance. The thorough characterization of each topology and sub-topology is presented in the manuscript and design methodology is derived for a particular case of pulsed current load.

Battery–ultracapacitor hybrids for pulsed current loads: A review

This work presents a model predictive control (MPC) approach to manage in real-time the energy generated by a grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) power plant with energy storage (ES), optimizing its economic revenue. This MPC approach stands out because, when a long enough prediction horizon is used, the saturation of the ES system (ESS) can be advanced by means of a prediction model of the PV panels production. Therefore, the PV+ES power plant can modify its production so as to manage the power deviations with regard to that committed in the daily and intraday electricity markets, with the objective of reducing economic penalties. The initial power commitment is supposed in this work to be given by a higher level energy management operator. By a proper definition of its objective function, the predictive control allows us to economically optimize the PV+ES power plant performance. This control strategy is tested in simulations with actual data measured for different days with varying meteorological conditions. Results provide a good reference on the economic benefits which can be obtained thanks to the MPC introduction.

/pdf/predictive-power-control-for-pv-plants-with-energy-storage-571udwpup4.pdf

Predictive Power Control for PV Plants With Energy Storage

Despite being more efficient, line commutated converter-HVDC links for the connection of large offshore wind farms have ac-filter bank size as one of their main drawbacks. This paper shows how the HVDC rectifier filter banks can be substantially reduced by taking advantage of the additional control possibilities offered by the use of wind turbines with fully rated converters. PSCAD simulations validate wind farm and diode rectifier HVDC link operation with a capacitor and filter bank five times smaller than its usual value. The proposed control algorithm allows for good harmonic and reactive power sharing between the different wind turbines. As the reduced capacitor bank operation leads to a redistribution of harmonic and reactive currents, an efficiency study has been carried out to evaluate the new power loss distribution with the reduced filter banks.

/pdf/lcc-hvdc-connection-of-offshore-wind-farms-with-reduced-4sbnw0ir0n.pdf

LCC-HVDC Connection of Offshore Wind Farms With Reduced Filter Banks

This paper proposes an optimized energy management strategy (EMS) for photovoltaic (PV) power plants with energy storage (ES) based on the estimation of the daily solar energy production. This EMS produces a constant-by-hours power reference which mitigates the stochastic nature of PV production typically associated to the solar resource, and enables PV power plants to take part in the day and intraday electricity markets. The possibility of using the intraday market sessions to refine the plant's power reference paves the way to minimizing the energy capacity ratings of the ES system required to operate the PV power plant without incurring excessive production deviations. This proposal is analyzed on an annual basis using actual irradiance data and theoretical irradiance models extracted from official databases.

/pdf/daily-solar-energy-estimation-for-minimizing-energy-storage-5aswi8cssa.pdf

Daily Solar Energy Estimation for Minimizing Energy Storage Requirements in PV Power Plants

This paper is intended to fill a gap in the current literature comparing and contrasting the experience of a number of European countries, U.S. states, and Australia with regard to wind energy support policy and electricity market design. As wind penetrations increase, the nature of these arrangements becomes an increasingly important determinant of how effectively and efficiently this generation is integrated into the electricity industry. The jurisdictions considered in this paper exhibit a range of wind support policy measures from feed-in tariffs to green certificates, and electricity industry arrangements including vertically integrated utilities, bilateral trading with net pools, as well as gross wholesale pool markets. We consider the challenges that various countries and states have faced as wind generation expanded and how they have responded. Findings include the limitations of traditional feed-in tariffs at higher wind penetrations because they shield wind project developers and operators from the implications of their generation on wider electricity market operation. With regard to market design, wind forecasting and predispatch requirements are particularly important for forward markets, whereas the formal involvement of wind in scheduling and ancillary services (balancing and contingencies) is key for real-time markets.

http://bibing.us.es/proyectos/abreproy/70370/fichero/14.+Wind-+Comparison+of+Wind+Energy+Support+Policy+and+Electricity+Market+Design+in+Europe%2C+the+United+States%2C+and+Austra%7E1.pdf

N. Aparicio

Papers

Predictive Power Control for PV Plants With Energy Storage

LCC-HVDC Connection of Offshore Wind Farms With Reduced Filter Banks

Daily Solar Energy Estimation for Minimizing Energy Storage Requirements in PV Power Plants

Comparison of Wind Energy Support Policy and Electricity Market Design in Europe, the United States, and Australia

Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics