Guest editorial - special issue on power electronics in DC distribution systems

The existing infrastructures of electrical power systems are still dominated by ac. The challenge in the coming years lies in developing new infrastructures and power modules, setting up safety standards and regulations, and investigating system stability and dynamics for dc distribution systems, to which this Special Issue is dedicated. A perspective of the challenge is broken down as follows: 1) infrastructures of dc distribution systems; 2) power modules; 3) energy management system; 4) safety standard and regulation; 5) DC-bus voltage regulation; 6) modeling and control; 7) interface of dc-bus to ac-grid; 8) energy storage and compensation; 9) DC appliances and electronic products; 10) accessories for dc distribution systems. For this Special Issue, there was a record number of over 100 manuscripts. From these high-quality papers submitted, the editorial team selected 37 papers for publication in this Special Issue, and they cover five major topic areas, as follows: 1) infrastructure, energy storage and management (8 papers); 2) interface of dc-bus to ac-grid (7 papers); 3) converter modules (11 papers); 4) modeling and control (8 papers); 5) DC-bus voltage regulation (3 papers).