IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2020 - 23

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effective approach to reduce the peak load of a household
and lower energy costs to benefit the consumer. For off-grid
applications, the integration of PVs and batteries offers a
user-friendly modular energy system, providing opportunities for poverty-stricken energy regions. This approach is
still in the early phases of development, so understanding
the major advantages of integration and overcoming the
associated challenges would lead to its widespread use.
This article addresses the emerging integration issues and
uses our current research efforts to provide readers with
examples of technical approaches.

The Growth of Power Electronics
By the end of the 19th century, humanity was ready to embrace electricity as part of daily life. All the pieces fell into
place to enable electricity to be generated, stored, and distributed, with the invention and development of components and systems such as the capacitor, voltaic pile battery, inductor, transformer, three-phase power system, and
rotating machinery. Although limited, a new era of power
generation and transmission was ushered in with the global
realization that electrical energy was the lifeblood necessary for the progress of human civilization. Access to electricity was on the rise, and the field of electrical and power
engineering was solidly established. At the same time, a
new electrical engineering discipline for converting power
from one form to another to address application-specific
loads started to emerge. Later, this discipline became
known as power electronics, whose main function was to
convert and process power from the point of generation to
the point of the load at the user end.
During the early 20th century, the field of power electronics was in its infancy [1]-[4]. It could be argued that the discipline began with the invention of the mercury arc rectifier in
1902, which converted ac into dc. Gradual improvements in
rectifier technology, vacuum tube switching technology, and
associated passive components continued until the invention
of the silicon transistor by Bell Labs in 1947, which ushered in
the solid-state electronics revolution. The following 50 years
witnessed tremendous improvements in power semiconductor devices, coupled with advances in integrated circuits,

digital signal processors, and digital control technology. By
the close of the last century, the golden age of power electronics was in full swing, fueled by a surge of R&D activities
in all kinds of applications related to the field.
Today, a new frontier of power electronics technologies
has been reached. It was made possible by advances in
device materials, power-processing control functionalities,
packaging and thermal management technology, and cries
for higher energy efficiency due to ever-increasing awareness of global warming and environmental pollution. At
the 10th Future of Electronics Power Processing and Conversion (also known as FEPPCON X) meeting in 2019, the
participants were confident that "the application reach of
power electronics will spread everywhere in every phase
of industrial, commercial, residential, utility, transportation, aerospace, and military environments" [5]-[7]. In fact,
today, it is estimated that roughly 30% of processed electrical power uses power electronics. The total is expected to
rise to as much as 80% by 2030 [8].
The empowerment of power electronics has been made
possible by the technological evolution of electrical components utilized during electrical power conversion, processing, and delivery stages. In fact, one may argue that
the evolution of power electronics will continue to follow
that of power electronics processing components. Just as
the previous surge was propelled by the invention and commercialization of power semiconductor devices, the new
momentum in power electronics will be driven by the costeffective commercialization of lithium (Li)-ion batteries.
The quantum improvement of battery technology in terms
of cost, performance efficiency, and reliability opens
the door for power electronics to embrace batteries
as reliable processing components. This will set
the stage for a new era of power electronics
integration technologies with an emphasis
on system-level design, optimization,
and functional modularization.
This article provides a highlevel technical discussion
of integrating one PV
panel and a battery

June 2020

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IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2020

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