A Markovian Approach Applied to Reliability Modeling of Bidirectional DC-DC Converters Used in PHEVs and Smart Grids

In this paper, a stochastic approach is proposed for reliability assessment of bidirectional DC-DC converters, including the fault-tolerant ones. This type of converters can be used in a smart DC grid, feeding DC loads such as home appliances and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The reliability of bidirectional DC-DC converters is of such an importance, due to the key role of the expected increasingly utilization of DC grids in modern Smart Grid. Markov processes are suggested for reliability modeling and consequently calculating the expected effective lifetime of bidirectional converters. A three-leg bidirectional interleaved converter using data of Toyota Prius 2012 hybrid electric vehicle is used as a case study. Besides, the influence of environment and ambient temperature on converter lifetime is studied. The impact of modeling the reliability of the converter and adding reliability constraints on the technical design procedure of the converter is also investigated. In order to investigate the effect of leg increase on the lifetime of the converter, single leg to five-leg interleave DC-DC converters are studied considering economical aspect and the results are extrapolated for six and seven-leg converters. The proposed method could be generalized so that the number of legs and input and output capacitors could be an arbitrary number

A complex adaptive system of systems approach to human–automation interaction in smart grid

This chapter expresses three cognitive genres: descriptive genre, normative/prescriptive genre, and know-how genre. The descriptive genre introduces and discusses on the following disciplines: the core concepts of complexity, complex adaptive system (CAS) of systems (CASoS), the application domains of human-automation interaction (HAI) and adaptive autonomy (AA), especially in Smart Grid, and two implementation ideas of expert systems and Petri nets. The chapter describes the automation related notions, that is, automation and HAI, followed by the investigation of HAI models' evolution from the perspectives of dimensions and dynamism. The idea of AA is then introduced as a dynamic HAI scheme, followed by the classification of AA implementation methods. Petri nets are introduced as powerful tools for modeling complex systems (CxS). Finally, Petri net realization of the adaptive autonomy expert system (AAES) is presented, followed by a performance evaluation study.Özyeğin Universit

A Systems Approach to Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure Design for Utility Management Automation Systems

Almost all of electric utility companies are planning to improve their management automation system, in order to meet the changing requirements of new liberalized energy market and to benefit from the innovations in information and communication technology (ICT or IT). Architectural design of the utility management automation (UMA) systems for their IT-enabling requires proper selection of IT choices for UMA system, which leads to multi-criteria decision-makings (MCDM). In response to this need, this paper presents a model-based architectural design-decision methodology. The system design problem is formulated first then, the proposed design method is introduced, and implemented to one of the UMA functions–feeder reconfiguration function (FRF)– for a test distribution system. The results of the implementation are depicted, and comparatively discussed. The paper is concluded by going beyond the results and fair generalization of the discussed results finally, the future under-study or under-review works are declared