Solid-State Transformer for Energy Efficiency Enhancement

Abstract

The rapid evolution of power electronic solutions in all around the globe brings a common problem, which is the adoption of nonlinear loads. This fact carries out a strong impact over the quality of power systems and consequently on energy efficiency, since nonlinear loads act as sources of harmonic currents that flow to other loads or even sources, causing non-optimal performance in their operation. Nowadays, conventional transformers are limited to just manage (increase or decrease) voltage level, but they are not able to deal with power quality events, such as harmonics, sag, swell, among others. Hence, there is a need to incorporate a versatile smart device to deal with the challenges previously described for a smart grid environment. This chapter introduces a solid-state transformer (SST) with topology of multilevel cascade H bridge converter as a solution. SST is an emerging technology that has the advantages of low volume, low weight, fault isolation, and other management features. Within its fundamental operation, this chapter presents a detailed description of a SST system comprising communication and control, highlighting their main advantages in comparison with conventional transformer such as mitigation of waveform harmonic distortion, allowance of integration of distributed generation, and bi-directional power flow.

A Review on Power Electronics Technologies for Power Quality Improvement

“…These ancillary services, combined with communication functions, make the SST a smart transformer [76]. Thus, in addition to being able to function as a smart power meter, the SST is able to operate dynamically, alternating between various operation modes depending on the power grid conditions [77].…”

Glance into solid-state transformer technology: a mirror for possible research areas

“…e SST has relatively reduced size and weight due to use of High Frequency Transformer (HFT) in its design. Additional advantages of SST over the LFT are: mitigation of icker, on-demand reactive power support to grid, power quality improvement, fast control of bidirectional active power ow (Forward and reverse ow), protection from system disruptions and overloads, provision for energystorage capacity among others [9] and [10]. is paper conducted a research on evolution trend of SST, Its concept architecture, its conversion stages, HFT, and provides a general overview of the SST technology.…”