Direct Current (DC) transmission and distribution technologies have evolved in recent years. They offer superior efficiency, current carrying capacity, and response times as compared to conventional AC systems. Further, substantial advantages are their natural interface with many types of renewable energy resources, such as photovoltaic systems and battery energy storage systems at relatively high voltage, and compliance with consumer electronics at lower voltages, say, within a household environment. One of the core building blocks of DC-based technologies, especially at medium voltage levels, is power electronic systems technology. This cannot be emphasized enough as these units process, convert, and regulate all DC power and provide intelligence and sensing as electric power grids evolve.

A metaheuristic is a consistent set of ideas, concepts, and operators to design a heuristic optimization algorithm, that can provide a sufficiently good solution to an optimization problem with incomplete or imperfect information. Modern and emerging power systems, with the growing complexity of distributed and intermittent generation, are an important application for such methods.

A companion to Embedded Generation (IET, 2000), this book is a timely publication for an evolving industry. Renewable energy, ancillary services and deregulation of the power industry are changing electricity delivery networks. Microgrids, smartgrids and active distribution networks require a sound understanding of the basic concepts, generation technologies, impacts, operation, control and management, economic viability and market participation involved in grid integration. Practicing engineers in utilities and industry, researchers and students will appreciate this lucid description of the technologies that will enable future electricity systems.

Large rural areas in some regions of the world are still grappling with the challenge of electrification. The optimal solution is to provide reliable energy without adding more fossil fuel plants by using distributed renewable generation.

Microgrids have emerged as a promising solution for accommodating the integration of renewable energy resources. But the intermittency of renewable generation is posing challenges such as voltage/frequency fluctuations, and grid stability issues in grid-connected modes. Model predictive control (MPC) is a method for controlling a process while satisfying a set of constraints. It has been in use for chemical plants and in oil refineries since the 1980s, but in recent years has been deployed for power systems and electronics as well.

Modern power systems are highly complex due to increasing shares of intermittent renewable energy and distributed generation. Research requires computer simulation and modeling, and knowledge of methods and algorithms.

The development of large-scale renewable generation and load electrification call for highly efficient and flexible electric power integration, transmission and interconnection. High Voltage DC (HVDC) transmission technology has been recognized as the key technology for this scenario. HVDC transmissions, including both the line commutated converter (LCC) HVDC and voltage source converter (VSC) HVDC have played an important role in the modern electric power system. However, with the inclusion of power electronic devices, HVDC introduces the characteristics of nonlinearity and different timescales into the traditional electromechanical system and thus careful modeling and simulation of HVDC transmission are essential for power system design, commissioning, operation and maintenance.

Thanks to advances in power electronics device design, digital signal processing technologies and energy efficient algorithms, ac motors have become the backbone of the power electronics industry. Variable frequency drives (VFD's) together with IE3 and IE4 induction motors, permanent magnet motors, and synchronous reluctance motors have emerged as a new generation of greener high-performance technologies, which offer improvements to process and speed control, product quality, energy consumption and diagnostics analytics.

This comprehensive book describes how to systematically assess the stability of electrical grids with a high share of power electronics converters and considers what their presence in the electrical grid entails. It is divided into three areas: Part 1 presents the three fundamental stability analysis methods and tools for power electronics systems; Part 2 examines applications in power utility systems; and Part 3 describes applications in microgrids and mobile power systems.

Power devices are key to modern power systems, performing essential functions such as inverting and changing voltages, buffering, and switching. The increasing complexity of power systems, with distributed renewable generation on the rise, is posing challenges to these devices. In recent years, several new devices have emerged, including wide bandgap devices, each with advantages and weaknesses depending on circumstances and applications.

With the integration of more distributed or aggregated renewables, and the wide utilization of power electronic devices, modern power systems are facing new stability and security challenges, such as the weakly damped oscillation caused by wind farms connected through long distance transmission lines, the frequency stability problem induced by the reduction of inertia and the voltage stability issue resulting from the interactions between transmission systems and dynamic loads.

Multicore technology has brought about the reexamination of traditional power system electromagnetic transient simulation methods. The technological penetration of this advancement in power system simulation is not noticeable, but its demand is growing in importance in anticipation of the many-core shift. The availability of this technology in personal computers has orchestrated the redesign of simulation approaches throughout the software industry - and in particular, the parallelization of power system simulation.