Distributed generation systems (DGSs) have been getting more and more attention in terms of renewable energy use and new generation technologies in the past decades. The self-excited induction generator (SEIG) occupies an important role in the area of energy conversion due to its low cost, robustness and simple control. Unlike synchronous generators, the SEIG has to absorb capacitive reactive power from the outer device aiming to stabilize the terminal voltage at load changes. This paper presents a novel static VAR compensator (SVC) called a magnetic energy recovery switch (MERS) to serve as a voltage controller in SEIG powered DGSs. In addition, many small scale SEIGs, instead of a single large one, are applied and devoted to promote the generation efficiency. To begin with, an expandable mathematic model based on a d-q equivalent circuit is created for parallel SEIGs. The control method of the MERS is further improved with the objective of broadening its operating range and restraining current harmonics by parameter optimization. A hybrid control strategy is developed by taking both of the stand-alone and grid-connected modes into consideration. Then simulation and experiments are carried out in the case of single and double SEIG(s) generation. Finally, the measurement results verify that the proposed DGS with SVC-MERS achieves a better stability and higher feasibility. The major advantages of the mentioned variable reactive power supplier, when compared to the STATCOM, include the adoption of a small DC capacitor, line frequency switching, simple control and less loss.

With the rapid development of energy internet and new energy-related industries, lithium-ion batteries are widely used in various fields due to their superior energy storage characteristics. To reduce the influence of the inconsistency of the individual cells in the battery pack, a switch array DC equalization circuit together with an acceleration information Gauss-Seidel (DAIGS) method is proposed. The aging factor is added in the system state matrix considering the battery time effect. In this method, the energy transfer path can be optimized by updating the switch control matrix in each iteration. Hence, it can avoid the repeated charging and discharging of the battery and also reduce energy loss in rapid equalization. A four-cell battery string equalization model simulation was built in the PSIM and the experiment was also carried out to prove the feasibility of the proposed method. It was verified that the DAIGS had better performance under the same precision or number of iterations.

Summary Lithium‐ion batteries play an important role in large‐scale energy storage systems. However, the power inconsistency of the battery packs restricts the developments of modern technologies in energy storage area. The motivation of the present study is to serve the growing needs of the energy balance for lithium‐ion battery packs. The present study proposes a flexible multiphase interleaved converter for the energy equalization of a lithium battery pack with series configuration. Moreover, the graph theory is applied to the analysis of equalization circuits. It is intended to establish a unified standard for the comparison. The parameter of average efficiency is considered as an important indicator to evaluate the performance of the equilibrium system. This mentioned method is verified by constructing a lithium‐ion battery pack with the equalization circuit. It is observed that the proposed multiphase interleaved converter has flexible characteristics, while it has low energy loss compared with the conventional methods. The proposed method simplifies the complex equalization circuits into graphs and facilitates the comparison of the average efficiency of the system. It is concluded that this method is a feasible and powerful for evaluating the battery equalization circuit. This approach can be applied for solving complex problems in other engineering applications.