Advancements in power electronics and drives in interface with growing renewable energy resources

Abstract

The whole world is now concentrating on advancing their pool of renewable energy resources. Immense growth has happened in the field of renewable energy and the energy harvesting methods in the past decade. It is estimated that there is still a huge potential of growth remaining in the field of renewable energy resources in the coming years. Generation of renewable energy at the source end to the transmission of the energy to the utility end is done at various interstates coupled with power electronic equipments and systems. Applications of power electronics are expanding at a high pace in industrial power generation, utility, grid integration, and transmission environments due to the advancements in technology and reduction in cost and size of the components and systems. There are numerous multistage converters and inverters topologies being developed for processing and delivering the gigawatt level of renewable power being produced. This paper highlights the growth of power electronics starting from semiconductor type switching devices to various multistage topologies which will extensively contribute to the development and growth of renewable energy resources around the globe. It is a fact that power electronics is an integral part of renewable energy generation and utilization and its optimization of size, cost, and performance is necessary for the most efficient harvesting. Latest advancements in the various ratings of switching devices and components are discussed in the paper. Proper topology based implementation of power electronics and motor drives in the generation of various renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power, fuel cells, biomass, and other energy storage elements are discussed in details. Individual sources of renewable energy resources interfaced with multistages of power electronic systems are elaborated in the paper.