The use of distributed energy resources (DER) is increasingly being pursued as a supplement and an alternative to large conventional central power stations. The specification of a power electronics interface is subject to requirements related not only to the renewable energy source itself but also to its effects on power system operation, especially where the intermittent energy source constitutes a significant part of the total system capacity. In this paper, new trends in power electronics for the integration of wind and photovoltaic power generators are presented. A review of appropriate storage systems technology used for the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources is also introduced. Discussions about common and future trends in renewable energy systems based on reliability and maturity of each technology are presented.

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Multilevel converters are considered today as the state of the art power conversion systems for high power and power quality demanding applications. This paper presents a tutorial on this technology, covering the operating principles, the different power circuit topologies, modulation methods, technical issues and industry applications. Special attention is given to established technology already found in industry with more in depth and self-contained information, while recent advances and state of the art contributions are addressed with useful references. This paper serves as an introduction to the subject for the not familiarized reader, as well as an update or reference for academics and practicing engineers working in the field of industrial and power electronics.

In this paper, a novel three-dimensional (3-D) space-vector algorithm for four-leg multilevel converters is presented. It can be applied to active power filters or neutral-current compensator applications for mitigating harmonics and zerosequence components using abc coordinates (referred from now on this paper as natural coordinates). This technique greatly simplifies the selection of the 3-D region where a given voltage vector is supposed to be found. Compared to a three-level modulation algorithm for three-leg multilevel converters, this algorithm does not increase its complexity and the calculations of the active vectors with the corresponding switching time that generate the reference voltage vector. In addition, the low-computational cost of the proposed algorithm is always the same and it is independent of the number of levels of the converter.

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