• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.9
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• pp.1674-1683
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• 2011

More than 80% of electric loads need DC electricity rather than AC at the moment. If DC power could be supplied directly to the terminal loads, power conversion stages including rectifiers, converters, and power adapters can be reduced or simplified. Therefore, DC microgrids may be able to improve energy efficiency of power distribution systems. In addition, DC microgrids can increase the penetration level of renewable energy resources because many renewable energy resources such as solar photovoltaic(PV) generators, fuel cells, and batteries generate electric power in the form of DC power. The integration of the DC generators to AC electric power systems requires the power conversion circuits that may cause additional energy loss. This paper discusses the capability and feasibility of DC microgrids with regard to energy efficiency analysis through detailed dynamic simulation of DC and AC microgrids. The dynamic simulation models of DC and AC microgrids based on the Microgrid Test System in KEPCO Research Institute are described in detail. Through simulation studies on various conditions, this paper compares the energy efficiency and advantages of DC and AC microgrids.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.2089-2098
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• 2017

Microgrid is a convenient, reliable, and eco-friendly approach for the integration of Distributed Generation (DG) sources into the utility power systems. To date, AC microgrids have been the most common architecture, but DC microgrids are gaining an increasing interest owing to the provision of numerous benefits in comparison with AC ones. These benefits encompass higher reliability, power quality and transmission capacity, non-complex control as well as direct connection to some DG sources, loads and Energy Storage Systems (ESSs). In this paper, main challenges and available approaches for the protection of AC and DC microgrids are discussed. After description, analysis and classification of the existing schemes, some research directions including coordination between AC and DC protective devices as well as development of combined control and protection schemes for the realization of future hybrid AC/DC microgrids are pointed out.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.6_3
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• pp.1259-1267
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• 2023

In recent years, as the demand for distributed power has increased, the need for microgrids connected to grid power and renewable power generation sources has emerged. In the case of DC microgrids, reactive power does not occur, and power conversion losses are reduced compared to AC when connecting to the load and power grid[2]. With the revitalization of the DC distribution network industry, various studies and demonstrations of DC microgrids have been carried out. In the case of the recent unit distribution, its stability and effectiveness have been verified through empirical and research analysis. However, there is a lack of empirical tests to prevent chain accidents for the protection of the power grid circuits and the misoperation of the distributed power system caused by individual accidents when connecting various distributed power sources and power grids. In this paper, the operation plan of a stable multi-circuit DC distribution connection for the demonstration site was verified through the protection cooperation and operation algorithm for the stable linkage management of the DC distribution network composed of such a multi-circuit.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.191-200
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• 2019

This study proposes a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) system based on National Instruments' PXI platform to test power management and operation strategies for DC microgrids (MGs). The HILS system is developed based on the controller HIL prototype, which involves testing the controller board in hardware with a real-time simulation model of the plant in a real-time digital simulator. The system provides an economical and effective testing function for research on MG systems. The decentralized power management strategy based on the DC bus signaling method for DC MGs has been developed and implemented on the HILS platform. HILS results are determined to be similar to those of the off-line simulation in PSIM software.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1609-1618
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• 2015

DC microgrids are considered as prospective systems because of their easy connection of distributed energy resources (DERs) and electric vehicles (EVs), reduction of conversion loss between dc output sources and loads, lack of reactive power issues, etc. These features make them very suitable for future industrial and commercial buildings' power systems. In addition, the bipolar-type dc system structure is more popular, because it provides two voltage levels for different power converters and loads. To keep voltage balanced in such a dc system, a bidirectional dual buck-boost voltage balancer with direct coupling is introduced based on P-cell and N-cell concepts. This results in greatly enhanced system reliability thanks to no shoot-through problems and lower switching losses with the help of power MOSFETs. In order to increase system efficiency and reliability, a novel burst-mode control strategy is proposed for the dual buck-boost voltage balancer. The basic operating principle, the current relations, and a small-signal model of the voltage balancer are analyzed under the burst-mode control scheme in detail. Finally, simulation experiments are performed and a laboratory unit with a 5kW unbalanced ability is constructed to verify the viability of the bidirectional dual buck-boost voltage balancer under the proposed burst-mode control scheme in low-voltage bipolar-type dc microgrids.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2018.07a
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• pp.376-377
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• 2018

A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform for a power management control of islanded DC microgrids is established. In order to avoid the complexity and high costs, a decentralized control based on the DC Bus Signaling (DBS) method is applied to the HIL system. The simulation results for the HIL microgrid platform have verified the effectiveness of power management strategy.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.355-363
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• 2022

This paper presents the modeling for islanded hybrid AC/DC microgrid and the verification of the proposed supervisory controller for energy management for this microgrid. The supervisory controller allows the microgrid system to operate in different power flows through the proposed control algorithm, it has several roles in the management of the energy flow between the different components of the microgrid for reliable operation. The proposed microgrid has both essential objectives such as the maximum use of renewable energies resources and the reduction of multiple conversion processes in an individual AC or DC microgrids. The microgrid system considered for this study has a solar photovoltaic (PV), a wind turbine (WT), a battery (BT), and a AC/DC loads. A small islanded hybrid AC/DC microgrid has been modeled and simulated using the MATLAB-Simulink. The simulation results show that the system can maintain stable operation under the proposed supervisory controller when the microgrid is switched from one operating mode of energy flow to another.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.328-335
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• 2018

An energy management method of DC microgrids using voltage compensation term is proposed in this study. Droop control is often implemented to operate the DC microgrid. However, the droop control necessarily generates voltage variation. Energy flow is also difficult to control because the droop control mainly focuses on proportional load sharing. To solve these problems, the voltage compensation term based on the low-bandwidth communication is used to determine the operating band of the converter. Energy management and voltage variation minimization can be achieved by judging the operating band according to the magnitude of voltage compensation term. The validity of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experiments.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.345-351
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• 2018

A distributed control method is proposed to improve the power sharing performance of bidirectional distributed generators and the voltage regulation performance of a DC bus in a DC microgrid. Voltage sensitivity analysis based on power flow analysis is conducted to analyze the structural characteristics of a DC microgrid. A distributed control method using a voltage sensitivity matrix is proposed on the basis of this analysis. The proposed method uses information received through the communication system and performs the droop gain variation method and voltage shift method without additional PI controllers. This approach achieves improved power sharing and voltage regulation performance without output transient states. The proposed method is implemented through a laboratory-scaled experimental system consisting of two bidirectional distributed generators, namely, a load and a non-dispatchable distributed generator in a four-bus ring-type model. The experimental results show improved power sharing accuracy and voltage regulation performance.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1223-1234
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• 2018

In this paper, a new three-port multidirectional DC-DC converter is proposed for integrating an energy storage system (ESS) to a bipolar DC microgrid (BPDCMG). The proposed converter provides a voltage-balancing function for the BPDCMG and adjusts the charge of the ESS. Thanks to the multi-functional operation of the proposed converter, the conversion stages of the system are reduced. In addition, the efficiency and weight of the system are improved. Therefore, this converter has a significant capability when it comes to use in portable BPDCMGs such as electric DC ships. The converter modes are analyzed and small-signal models of the converter in each of the independent modes are extracted. Finally, comprehensive simulation studies are carried out and a BPDCMG laboratory prototype is implemented in order to verify the performance of the proposed voltage balancer using the burst mode control scheme.