With the rapid development of modern energy applications such as renewable energy, PV systems, electric vehicles, and smart grids, DC-DC converters have become the key component to meet strict industrial demands. More advanced converters are effective in minimizing switching losses and providing an efficient energy conversion; nonetheless, the main challenge is to provide a single converter that has all the required features to deliver efficient energy for different types of modern energy systems and energy storage system integrations. This paper reviews multilevel, bidirectional, and resonant converters with respect to their constructions, classifications, merits, demerits, combined topologies, applications, and challenges; practical recommendations were also made to deliver clear ideas of the recent challenges and limited capabilities of these three converters to guide society on improving and providing a new, efficient, and economic converter that meets the strict demands of modern energy system integrations. The needs of other industrial applications, as well as the number of used elements for size and weight reduction, were also considered to achieve a power circuit that can effectively address the identified limitations. In brief, integrated bidirectional resonant DC-DC converters and multilevel inverters are expected to be well suited and highly demanded in various applications in the near future. Due to their highlighted merits, more studies are necessary for achieving a perfect level of reducing losses and components.

The voltage-source grid-supporting inverters (GSIs) are important to establish and support the frequency and voltage of a microgrid (MG) in both islanded and grid-connected modes. Traditionally, a cascaded control strategy that includes an external droop-based control loop and an inner proportional-integral (PI)-based voltage and current control loop is adopted to control a GSI, which barely shows inertia and limited control performance. In this article, a novel cascaded control strategy is proposed for a GSI. In the external loop, a VSG-based control strategy is adopted to increase the frequency stability of the MG, and a novel synchronization control method that does not use a complex PLL unit is proposed to satisfy the plug-and-play requirements of a GSI. In the inner voltage and current control loop, this article proposes an SMC-based vector control strategy which uses the fixed switching frequency and inherits the robustness and fast response speed of the SMC control. Both simulation and experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and improved performance of the proposed control strategy.

Electric vehicle grid integration (EVGI) is one of the most important parts of transportation electrification. However, large-scale EV charging/discharging can have an adverse effect on the distribution grid, due to a large amount of load being drawn from or fed back to the power grid. Additionally, the power electronics used in the grid interaction may impose additional complications, such as voltage and frequency deviation, harmonic distortion, etc. With proper control scheme designs for the grid-connected inverters, such complications can be mitigated, and several grid ancillary services, such as voltage and frequency support, reactive power support, and harmonic mitigation, can be facilitated from large-scale EVGI. In this study, a large-scale EVGI system is developed where the vector control implementation of a grid-connected inverter in the d-q reference frame is presented for providing different grid ancillary services using the EVGI system. The EVGI system is operated in different control modes to ensure multiple ancillary services of the power grid. The study is supported by the electromagnetic transient simulation performed in Matlab/Simulink of a large-scale EVGI system. The simulation shows that with the proper control mechanism of grid-connected inverters, EVGI can be used to provide several useful grid ancillary services.

After several accidents occurred in wind farms in the United States and around the world, the subsynchronous oscillation (SSO) issues in grid-connected wind farms have gained serious attention. Particularly, these issues have caused significant challenges to wind turbines with a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) because it is connected to the grid via both its stator and rotor paths. Traditionally, a P-Q capability chart is utilized to assure the safe operation boundary for a synchronous generator. But the energy conversion characteristics of a DFIG wind turbine are completely different. A critical factor to affect the reliable operation of a DFIG wind turbine is the rated current and pulse-width modulation (PWM) saturation constraints of its power converters. These constraint conditions can be affected by the wind turbine rotating speed and grid conditions. However, a detailed study of DFIG P-Q capability from these perspectives has not been conducted, which has hindered adequate understanding of many abnormal wind turbine operations reported in the literature and the development of advanced control technologies to overcome the challenges. The proposed study in this paper considers vector control implementation to DFIG power electronic converters in the dq reference frame, and the models and algorithms developed for the P-Q capability study have addressed specific DFIG power converter constraints that are different from those of a traditional synchronous generator. The paper especially focuses on exploring the dynamic natures of DFIG P-Q capability under uncertain and variable conditions to explore the root causes of many abnormal operations of DFIG wind turbines reported in the literature. The proposed study is validated through an electromagnetic transient simulation model of a grid-connected DFIG wind turbine. The proposed study has the potential to lead to the development of new DFIG control technologies that can help overcome the challenges for many abnormal operations of DFIG wind turbines.