Z-source converter integrated dc electric spring for power quality improvement in dc microgrid

Abstract

Increasing penetration of renewable energy sources reveals the concept of dc microgrid which has the advantages of low cost and low losses because of the elimination of the AC/DC conversion processes. The most frequently encountered power quality problem in DC microgrid is voltage fluctuations due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources. Direct current (DC) electric spring (DCES), which is an emerging power quality device in DC microgrids, is employed in order to mitigate the effect of the related problem. In this paper, z source converter integrated DCES topology (zDCES) is proposed to provide a wide compensation voltage range with lower duty cycle range and a remarkable decrease in the battery nominal voltage in comparison with conventional systems. The proposed system composed of full-bridge converter, z source converter and battery pack. zDCES provides high voltage gain by using z source converter with passive components without any need for additional switches. The shoot-through control, which is used to achieve high gain in z source converter, is implemented using existing full-bridge switches. The performance of the proposed system is compared with the traditional DCES system. The performance of the zDCES is validated with a case study with different voltage fluctuation states.