IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2023 - 4

From the Editor
by Ashok Bindra
Enhancing the Reliability
of Electric Grid
O
ver the years, the deployment
of distributed energy resources
(DER) has risen rapidly
with the explosive growth in renewable
energy sources (RES), especially
using the solar photovoltaic (PV) systems
and the wind power, as well as
the battery storage. While the early
deployments of DER were enabled by
synchronous generators (SGs), typically
driven by diesel or natural gas
engines, the recent growth in DER and
RES is made possible by advances in
grid connecting inverters. Primarily,
there are two types of grid connecting
inverters, namely grid-following (GFL)
inverters, and grid-forming (GFM)
inverters. Although inverters provide
the interface between the grid and
energy sources like solar panels, wind
turbines, and energy storage, there is
some difference between GFL and
GFM inverters.
In the fi r st cover ar t icle
" Advanced Inverter Interactions with
Electric Grids " by Leo Casey, Johan
Enslin, Geza Joos, Mark Siira, Bogdan
Borowy, and Chase Sun, the
authors suggest that new standards
and guides may be required for
inverter-based resources (IBR) operation,
and help specify the respective
roles of GFL and GFM operating
modes. This will reduce inverterbased
system events experienced by
power uti l ities world-wide and
increase the adoption rate of renewable
energy, according to the article.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2023.3273890
Date of publication: 27 June 2023
4
Plus, the article explains the transition
of the IBR from GFL mode to
GFM mode to enhance the reliability
of the electric grid.
Some standards already implicitly
define GFL and GFM modes of
operation in a limited number of
applications. Such is the case for a
microgrid. While the IBR operates
in GFL mode in a grid-connected
microgrid, it can also be operated in
GFM mode in an islanded microgrid.
This IBR defines the microgrid voltage
and frequency reference for
islanded mode. However, the operation
of IBR in future grids, either in
GFL mode or GFM mode, wi l l
depend upon grid operating requirements
as more RES are deployed,
concludes the article.
In the second cover ar t icle
" H2-Orange: Finding Energy Storage
Solutions for Decarbonizing Generation "
by Thomas Koeppe, Johan Enslin,
Tony Putman, Mark Johnson, and
Peter Hoeflich, the authors argue that
hydrogen as an energy carrier and
storage technology in hybrid networks
have a very bright future in the
quest to decarbonize fossil fuel generation.
The role of power electronics as
the interface between these different
hydrogen (H2) production and storing
technologies, as well as connecting
different energy networks, will be
more important in the future. In this
article, the authors describe the
objectives and key results from a feasibility
study about using H2 generation
and storage in a co-firing project
sponsored by the U.S. Department of
IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE z June 2023
Energy (DOE) named H2 Orange. In
fact, in this collaborative industryuniversity
team, with Duke Energy as
the asset owner and local utility, Siemens
Energy as the technology
owner, and Clemson University as
academia, site owner, and beneficiary
of the steam, is a unique arrangement
allowing for a comprehensive understanding
of the application of H2
energy storage systems. This study
indicates a critical H2 utilization point
occurring around 2040 with increased
electrolyzer activity triggered by 80%
CO2 reduction. This work strongly
supports the reduced and zero carbon
goals which all three partners share
along with most utilities, universities,
and industries in the nation.
While several control and hardware
solutions have been developed
to address the stability and power
quality issues with large-scale wind
power plants (WPPs), the energystorage
enhanced static synchronous
compensator (E-STATOM),
among others, recently emerged as
an attractive solution, according to
the third cover feature " EnergyStorage
Enhanced STATCOMs for
Wind Power Plants " by Fangzhou
Zhao, Xiongfei Wang, Zichao Zhou,
Lexuan Meng, Jean-Philippe Hasler,
Jan R. Svensson, Lukasz Kocewiak,
Haofeng Bai, and Hongyang Zhang.
The E-STATCOM integrates the
energy storage system, e.g., supercapacitor
or battery, into STATCOM,
and is equipped with the GFM control,
thereby offering several benefits
to WPPs.
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2023

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