STATCOM Technology Evolution for Tomorrow’s Grid: E-STATCOM, STATCOM With Supercapacitor-Based Active Power Capability

The urgency of climate change forces many countries and regions to accelerate toward the goal of a carbon-neutral economy. The consequence of replacing fossil-fuel synchronous generation with inverter-based renewables, such as wind and solar, leads to a paradigm shift from power systems dominated by synchronous machines to inverter-dominated power systems. When the share of inverter-based generation increases, the behavioral differences in terms of the grid services provided to the power network by generation become more salient. Services for grid stability that were historically inherently provided by synchronous generators now must be replaced by services from these inverter-based generation resources, other grid devices, or the combination of the two to ensure stable grid operation in the future as well.