Energy storage systems and power conversion electronics for e-transportation and smart grid

The special issue “Energy Storage Systems and Power Conversion Electronics for E-Transportation and Smart Grid” on MDPI Energies presents 20 accepted papers, with authors from North and South America, Asia, Europe and Africa, related to the emerging trends in energy storage and power conversion electronic circuits and systems, with a specific focus on transportation electrification and on the evolution of the electric grid to a smart grid. An extensive exploitation of renewable energy sources is foreseen for smart grid as well as a close integration with the energy storage and recharging systems of the electrified transportation era. Innovations at both algorithmic and hardware (i.e., power converters, electric drives, electronic control units (ECU), energy storage modules and charging stations) levels are proposed

Control Strategies of DC–DC Converter in Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle

There is a significant need to research and develop a compatible controller for the DC–DC converter used in fuel cells electric vehicles (EVs). Research has shown that fuel cells (FC) EVs have the potential of providing a far more promising performance in comparison to conventional combustion engine vehicles. This study aims to present a universal sliding mode control (SMC) technique to control the DC bus voltage under varying load conditions. Additionally, this research will utilize improved DC–DC converter topologies to boost the output voltage of the FCs. A DC–DC converter with a properly incorporated control scheme can be utilized to regulate the DC bus voltage–. A conventional linear controller, like a PID controller, is not suitable to be used as a controller to regulate the output voltage in the proposed application. This is due to the nonlinearity of the converter. Furthermore, this thesis will explore the use of a secondary power source which will be utilized during the start–up and transient condition of the FCEV. However, in this instance, a simple boost converter can be used as a reference to step–up the fuel cell output voltage. In terms of application, an FCEV requires stepping –up of the voltage through the use of a high power DC–DC converter or chopper. A control scheme must be developed to adjust the DC bus or load voltage to meet the vehicle requirements as well as to improve the overall efficiency of the FCEV. A simple SMC structure can be utilized to handle these issues and stabilize the output voltage of the DC–DC converter to maintain and establish a constant DC–link voltage during the load variations. To address the aforementioned issues, this thesis presents a sliding mode control technique to control the DC bus voltage under varying load conditions using improved DC–DC converter topologies to boost and stabilize the output voltage of the FCs

Synergetic Control of a Hybrid Battery-Ultracapacitor Energy Storage System

This chapter presents a synergy-based cascade control scheme for a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor (UC) energy storage system. The purpose is to improve the dynamic response of the battery-based energy storage system using an ultracapacitor module as an auxiliary energy storage unit. A bidirectional DC-DC converter is designed to interface between the ultracapacitor module and the main DC-bus. The control scheme is based on a fast inner current control loop using sliding mode control and an outer loop for DC-bus voltage regulation using synergy-based control. The improvement in performance is demonstrated through simulation and experiments. The results show that the DC-bus voltage is well regulated under external load disturbances with fast dynamic transients. The ultracapacitor module is able to absorb the sudden load variations and limit the battery power requirements by maintaining an optimal power balance between the two embedded storage units. The performance of the proposed synergy-based controller is compared with the standard PI controller, and its ability to achieve optimal transient performance is verified

A Two Stage Hierarchical Control Approach for the Optimal Energy Management in Commercial Building Microgrids Based on Local Wind Power and PEVs

The inclusion of plug-in electrical vehicles (PEVs) in microgrids not only could bring benefits by reducing the on-peak demand, but could also improve the economic efficiency and increase the environmental sustainability. Therefore, in this paper a two stage energy management strategy for the contribution of PEVs in demand response (DR) programs of commercial building microgrids is addressed. The main contribution of this work is the incorporation of the uncertainty of electricity prices in a model predictive control (MPC) based plan for energy management optimization. First, the optimization problem considers the operation of PEVs and wind power in order to optimize the energy management in the commercial building. Second, the total charged power reference which is computed for PEVs in this stage is sent to the PEVs control section so that it could be allocated to each PEV. Therefore, the power balance can be achieved between the power supply and the load in the proposed microgrid building while the operational cost is minimized. The predicted values for load demand, wind power, and electricity price are forecasted by a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model. In addition, the conditional value at risk (CVaR) is used for the uncertainty in the electricity prices. In the end, the results confirm that the PEVs can effectively contribute in the DR programs for the proposed microgrid model

Performance of heuristic optimization in coordination of plug-in electric vehicles charging

A heuristic load management (H-LMA) algorithm is presented for coordination of Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) in distribution networks to minimize system losses and regulate bus voltages. The impacts of optimization period T (varied from 15 minutes to 24 hours) and optimization time interval (varied 15 minutes to one hour) on the performance, accuracy and speed of the H-LMA is investigated through detailed simulations considering enormous scenarios. PEV coordination is performed by considering substation transformer loading while taking PEV owner priorities into consideration. Starting with the highest priority consumers, HLMA will use time intervals to distribute PEV charging within three designated high, medium and low priority time zones to minimize total system losses over period T while maintaining network operation criteria such as power generation and bus voltages within their permissible limits. Simulation results generated in MATLAB are presented for a 449 node distribution network populated with PEVs in residential feeders

Controlador no-lineal para sistemas de almacenamiento con voltaje de salida regulado y derivada de corriente segura para la batería

This paper proposes a non-linear control structure for a hybrid energy storage system with a series architecture, which regulates the voltage of a DC bus (output voltage) and ensures that the battery current fulfills the current slew-rate restriction. The proposed solution has two stages, in the first one, the battery is connected to a buck/boost converter that feeds an auxiliary capacitor. In the second stage, the auxiliary capacitor is connected to a DC bus through a second buck/boost converter. Both converters are regulated using cascaded control systems, where the inner loops are slidingmode controllers of the inductors’ current, and the outer loops in the first and second converter are designed to limit the slew-rate of the battery current and to regulate the dc bus voltage, respectively. The paper provides the design procedure for the controllers and validates its performance with simulation results for the power system operating in charging, discharging and stand-by modes.Este artículo propone una estructura de control no-lineal para un sistema de almacenamiento híbrido con una arquitectura en serie, en la cual se regula la tensión de un bus DC (voltaje de salida) y asegura que la corriente de la batería cumpla con la restricción de velocidad de cambio en la corriente. La solución propuesta tiene dos etapas, en la primera se conecta una batería a un convertidor buck/boost que alimenta un capacitor auxiliar. En la segunda etapa, el capacitor auxiliar se conecta a un bus de DC a través de un segundo convertidor buck/boost. Ambos convertidores se regulan utilizando sistemas de control en cascada, donde los lazos internos son controladores por modos deslizantes de las corrientes de los inductores, y los lazos externos del primer y el segundo convertidor se diseñan para limitar la velocidad de cambio de la corriente en la batería y regular la tensión en el bus de DC, respectivamente. El artículo proporciona el procedimiento de diseño para los controladores y valida su desempeño con resultados de simulación considerando el sistema de potencia operando en modos de carga, descarga y almacenamiento