Control of Power Electronics

From Agriculture, Automotive, Aerospace, Healthcare, Energy Generation and Transmission to IT, Power Electronics is a hidden industry present on every major industry of our modern society. Power electronics is the application of solid-state electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. In order to obtain a stable power supply and still obey a very wide range of different requirements, many control related challenges emerge. The arise of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and Energy Storage Systems (ESS), has been changing the traditional electrical grid, towards a more resilient, flexible and efficient one. Consequently, the development of DC grids, based on power electronics converters has become a hot topic. The recent and very promising Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) topology offers high modularity, reliability, easy maintenance and low losses. Moreover, this topology features a unique energy storage capability, highly useful, to decouple the source from the load. In other perspective, it offers a high number of degrees of freedom, which results in the design of complex control algorithms. In more conventional topologies, direct vector control is used to enhance the dynamic response of the converter. Due to high number of available and redundant vectors offered by the MMC topology, one can apply different vectors to find the same best output voltage to run a certain load. However, such flexibility opens the possibility of controlling the internal energy balance of the MMC without compromising the load supply. Combining both features has been a very challenging and rewarding research topic.