Distributed power electronics: An enabler for the future grid

Rapidly decreasing prices for renewable energy, increasing industrialization and electrification of the global economy, and a world-wide focus on reducing carbon emissions, is causing a reexamination of the power system of the future. A reliance on centralized planning and control, scheduled and dispatched generation, and unidirectional power flows, allowed the design of a robust and scalable power system, that did not require dynamic controls infused into the grid. As a result, the existing grid, the most complex machine built by man, has been the driver of sustained global economic growth for well over a century. Increasing levels of variable and non-dispatchable renewable energy resources mixed into the grid, bidirectional power flows resulting from a dramatic increase in the number of prosumers (‘producer + consumer’), are adding complexity, volatility and economic inefficiency to grid operations, making grid control with conventional centralized technologies very challenging. This paper looks at the role that distributed power electronics could play in the grid of the future, allowing a cost-effective approach to grid control that can help achieve global objectives of operating with high renewable penetration.