A power rerouting strategy in electrical microgrids under power electronics faults

Abstract

Due to rising environmental concerns and limited fossil fuels, clean and renewable resources are being used in power generation. Microgrids are used to connect these energy resources to local demand using power electronics interfaces. Power electronics faults at the inverter stage are critical issues that limit a microgrid's performance. In the literature, many techniques for fault-tolerant inverters were proposed. In this thesis, a system-level fault-tolerant method is proposed for microgrid inverters. It is applied by adding a controlled bidirectional switch between parallel inverters to allow for rerouting power during faults. The method is simulated and verified on PV inverters as well as grid-interfaced batteries. Results show that it is possible to recover significant amounts of curtailed power lost from distributed energy resources when their power electronics interfaces suffer from faults. An experimental prototype also verifies the methodology.