Access to clean, affordable and reliable energy has been a cornerstone of the world's increasing prosperity and economic growth since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Our use of energy in the twenty–first century must also be sustainable. Solar and water–based energy generation, and engineering of microbes to produce biofuels are a few examples of the alternatives. This Perspective puts these opportunities into a larger context by relating them to a number of aspects in the transportation and electricity generation sectors. It also provides a snapshot of the current energy landscape and discusses several research and development opportunities and pathways that could lead to a prosperous, sustainable and secure energy future for the world.

Opportunities and challenges for a sustainable energy future

Multilevel converters have been under research and development for more than three decades and have found successful industrial application. However, this is still a technology under development, and many new contributions and new commercial topologies have been reported in the last few years. The aim of this paper is to group and review these recent contributions, in order to establish the current state of the art and trends of the technology, to provide readers with a comprehensive and insightful review of where multilevel converter technology stands and is heading. This paper first presents a brief overview of well-established multilevel converters strongly oriented to their current state in industrial applications to then center the discussion on the new converters that have made their way into the industry. In addition, new promising topologies are discussed. Recent advances made in modulation and control of multilevel converters are also addressed. A great part of this paper is devoted to show nontraditional applications powered by multilevel converters and how multilevel converters are becoming an enabling technology in many industrial sectors. Finally, some future trends and challenges in the further development of this technology are discussed to motivate future contributions that address open problems and explore new possibilities.

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Recent Advances and Industrial Applications of Multilevel Converters

Overview of current development in electrical energy storage technologies and the application potential in power system operation

This paper reviews the current status and implementation of battery chargers, charging power levels, and infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles and hybrids. Charger systems are categorized into off-board and on-board types with unidirectional or bidirectional power flow. Unidirectional charging limits hardware requirements and simplifies interconnection issues. Bidirectional charging supports battery energy injection back to the grid. Typical on-board chargers restrict power because of weight, space, and cost constraints. They can be integrated with the electric drive to avoid these problems. The availability of charging infrastructure reduces on-board energy storage requirements and costs. On-board charger systems can be conductive or inductive. An off-board charger can be designed for high charging rates and is less constrained by size and weight. Level 1 (convenience), Level 2 (primary), and Level 3 (fast) power levels are discussed. Future aspects such as roadbed charging are presented. Various power level chargers and infrastructure configurations are presented, compared, and evaluated based on amount of power, charging time and location, cost, equipment, and other factors.

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Review of Battery Charger Topologies, Charging Power Levels, and Infrastructure for Plug-In Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

Wireless power transfer (WPT) using magnetic resonance is the technology which could set human free from the annoying wires. In fact, the WPT adopts the same basic theory which has already been developed for at least 30 years with the term inductive power transfer. WPT technology is developing rapidly in recent years. At kilowatts power level, the transfer distance increases from several millimeters to several hundred millimeters with a grid to load efficiency above 90%. The advances make the WPT very attractive to the electric vehicle (EV) charging applications in both stationary and dynamic charging scenarios. This paper reviewed the technologies in the WPT area applicable to EV wireless charging. By introducing WPT in EVs, the obstacles of charging time, range, and cost can be easily mitigated. Battery technology is no longer relevant in the mass market penetration of EVs. It is hoped that researchers could be encouraged by the state-of-the-art achievements, and push forward the further development of WPT as well as the expansion of EV.

Wireless Power Transfer for Electric Vehicle Applications

This paper considers the operational issues related to community level micro-grids which uses PV systems as the main local power generation. To facilitate the operation of such systems, the paper investigates the use of local storage, and proposes an Energy Management System (EMS) for this purpose. The paper shows that the proposed EMS can address the main operational issues, such as reducing energy consumption during peak loading conditions and limiting excess reverse power flow back to the utility.

An Energy Management System for a community energy storage system

Demands for higher fuel economy, performance, and reliability as well as reduced emissions push the automotive industry to seek electrification of ancillaries and engine augmentations. In the future cars, throttle actuation, power steering, anti-lock braking, rear-wheel steering, air-conditioning, ride-height adjustment, active suspension, and electrically heated catalyst will all benefit from the electrical power system. Therefore, a higher system voltage, such as the proposed 42 V, is necessary to handle these new-introduced loads. On the other hand, due to the environmental concerns, there is a definite development towards new electrically-assisted propulsion systems that improve fuel economy. In this paper, the effects of the new introduced electrical systems including hotel and auxiliary loads on the electrical power systems of conventional and more electric cars are presented. Dynamic characteristics of electrical loads are defined for typical drive cycles. Finally, system level issues such as fuel economy and vehicle performances are addressed.

Performance analysis of automotive power systems: effects of power electronic intensive loads and electrically-assisted propulsion systems

This paper presents a universal flying restart strategy for scalar ( V/f ) controlled induction machines. The proposed method performs a frequency search to estimate the rotor speed, and applies the correct frequency and voltage to minimize the inrush current during the restart. This method uses the measured phase current and the motor nameplate parameters, thus making the approach ideal for scalar-controlled motor drives. In addition, the restart algorithm provides controllable restart dynamics, independent of the motor parameters. The main advantages of this method include simple and cost effective implementation without the need for additional sensors, and controllable restart dynamics independent of the motor parameters. Beyond the development of the algorithm, we consider implementation issues to provide a general guideline for the application of the developed algorithm.

Universal Restart Strategy for Scalar (V/f) Controlled Induction Machines

To seamlessly transition a microgrid (MG) from islanded to grid-connected mode, it is necessary to synchronize the magnitude, frequency, and phase of the MG voltage to the voltage of the main grid. In this paper, we propose a distributed control strategy to achieve synchronized operation of an islanded MG supported by multiple controllable distributed generators (DGs). The proposed method utilizes a pinning-based consensus algorithm to ensure explicit coordination between magnitude, frequency, and phase angle regulation while ensuring proportional power sharing. System frequency is regulated by all the DGs in proportion to their capacity, while a selected DG eliminates the phase and magnitude regulation errors. Controller design criteria is based on small-signal stability analysis. The proposed control strategy is implemented in hardware controllers and its effectiveness is demonstrated using a real-time hardware-in-the-loop MG testbed.

Distributed Control Strategy to Achieve Synchronized Operation of an Islanded MG

Distributed secondary control has been widely used in hierarchical control structures, where multiple distributed generators (DGs) need to coordinate to regulate system voltage and frequency. In these systems, consensus algorithms determine the average of a group of dynamic states (e.g., voltages measured by a group of DGs). To be useful, consensus algorithms must be computationally efficient, stable and accurate. In practice, numerous practical implementation challenges significantly affect the consensus equilibrium. In this paper, we quantify the accuracy deviations of the distributed average observer algorithms proposed in the literature to demonstrate the problems with the state-of-the-art distributed averaging techniques. A novel approach is proposed that achieves accurate average tracking in the presence of time-varying communication delays among agents. In our implementation, time synchronization of all distributed controllers is enabled by a novel software platform, called Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS). The proposed distributed average observer is implemented on hardware controllers and its effectiveness is validated in a controller hardware-in-the-loop testbed.

Srdjan Lukic

Papers

An Energy Management System for a community energy storage system

Performance analysis of automotive power systems: effects of power electronic intensive loads and electrically-assisted propulsion systems

Universal Restart Strategy for Scalar (V/f) Controlled Induction Machines

Distributed Control Strategy to Achieve Synchronized Operation of an Islanded MG

Accurate Consensus-Based Distributed Averaging With Variable Time Delay in Support of Distributed Secondary Control Algorithms