Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Modeling and Control of Power Electronics for Renewable Energy and Power Systems

Renewable energy and power system applications present significant new challenges for modeling and control in power electronics. Unlike traditional power sources, which are operated to match the demand of the loads, power electronic interfaces for renewable energy sources, such as PV and wind, are controlled to extract the maximal available power. In grid-connected systems, the power grid as the “load” is expected to accept any amount of power produced from these variable sources. Different from traditional passive or active loads, the power grid is a complex dynamic network that is much more difficult to model for power electronics control design. Additionally, the sinusoidal grid voltage represents a time-varying operation trajectory, making it difficult to develop small-signal models that are essential for control design. Existing power system modeling and control design methods based on phasor models are only valid below the grid fundamental frequency and cannot be used to design the fast control loops characteristic of most power electronic circuits.