Investigations on Power Electronics requirements in Emerging Applications

Abstract

A survey and study on requirement of power electronics in emerging applications will be done. Under this topic, Medium Power Segment (MPS), Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS), and Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging are taken into account. The work is organized in a way, that the various converter topologies and hence role of semiconductor device technology in enhancing their performance, for Electric Drives employed in medium power segment and wind energy conversion system are studied. Apart from it, the converter topologies employed in Electric Vehicle Charging are also analysed. Converter topologies which are being commercially employed in Medium Power Segment (MPS) drives and EV charging are going to be the main area of focus, so a comparative analysis for them will be carried out. Features of these topologies from the application point of view will be realized. To start with the above, a Doubly Fed Induction Generator for Wind Energy Conversion System is taken into account. In recent years, the efforts to spread use of renewable energy resources like solar, wind etc. instead of pollutant fossil fuels and other forms have increased. The increment in energy demand is now forcing us to generate power using these non-conventional sources. Most of the power across nation is generated by means of fossil-fuels resulting into huge amount of carbon emissions in the environment, which encourages power producers to move towards the Green Power Technology. Among all the available non-conventional energy sources, Wind energy conversion system (WECS) has several advantages eg. It is clean and available in plenty and hence can be used for contributing towards the significant share in power generation. Under this area of work, the requirements from Power electronics for successful integration of machine with Grid will be studied and implemented in the simulations. Doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) will be the main focus in this study. Converter configurations and their controls will be investigated. A back-back converter configuration is generally used between the machine and Grid. The stator of this machine is directly connected to grid whereas its rotor is given mechanical excitation from turbine and electrical excitation from the inverter, in order to control the overall performance of machine. This back-back converter is Investigations on Power Electronics Requirements in Emerging Applications comprised of rotor side converter and grid side converter separated by a dc link. The purpose of grid side converter is to maintain constant dc link voltage, which acts as an input to the rotor side converter. Rotor side converter is in charge of injecting currents of desired phase, magnitude and frequency into rotor winding. This investigation will be done on DFIG with a basic two level IGBT converter, and on the basis of results obtained, modification in existing technology, including possibilities of battery energy storage, three level converters, and switching devices so employed in these converters, in order to achieve better performance in terms of losses, efficiency, reliability and cost. These simulations and analysis will be carried out on the simulation software PLECS.