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AbstractMany electrical sources and loads are operating at differences are caused by several influences like the used
different power levels, partly with full and partly with only a topology, the kind of switching devices, the mode of operation
small percentage of their rated power (e.g. photovoltaic systems, and more.
elevators or electric heaters). For such devices the connection
to the grid can be more efficient with several parallel-connected
converters instead of a larger single one. A system of parallel- PSO,1 PSI,1
Converter 1 PSI
connected converters facilitates the potential to increase the PSO
Source Sink
overall efficiency of the system, either by the selection of different
topologies and switching devices of the particular converters or PSO,2 PSI,2
Converter 2
by different operating strategies to split the power between the
single converters. This paper presents a method to optimize
the operating strategy of such systems with different parallel-
operating converters, including the optimal choice of an arrange- PSO,n PSI,n
Converter n
ment based on a specific power demand profile. These two topics
sound different but the optimal converter combination can only
be selected if the most efficient operation strategy is available.
Therefore these topics are interrelated. Fig. 1. Principle of the treated arrangement in this paper.
For the method presented in this paper, the reasons for the
I. I NTRODUCTION different efficiency profiles are subsidiary. Therefore it is re-
Developing power electronic systems the converter topology nounced to give an explanation, as done in [2]. Figure 2 shows
selection is one of the big challenges to reach highest effi- exemplary shapes of efficiency curves; the differences between
cencies. One of the results on the run after high conversion the converters are simply indicated by "configuration".
efficiency is, that many different converter topologies are avail-
able. The efficiency of most converters depends significantly 100
on the operation point. As shown in [1], it is possible to raise 90
the efficiency for particular operation points by using several
80
equal converters in parallel instead of a large single one. Such
an arrangement is conceivable for both, loads like elevators 70
/%
switched off. This yields a small potential to shape and enhance The method presented in this paper deals with static
the resulting efficiency curve. The parallel connection of efficiency curves. The calculations for the selection of the
converters with different power ranges and topologies provides converter combination have to be executed offline. The opti-
more degrees of freedom to influence the overall efficiency mization of the operation strategy can also be executed offline
curve. Especially for this purpose the optimal split of the power for static efficiency curves. The results can be used at runtime
differs from a symmetrical split and therefore optimization using a lookup table. As prospective, it seems feasible to
algorithms have to be applied. also take care of temperature influences and other parame-
ters, which change the efficiency curves during runtime and
If an efficiency optimized split of the power is executed, optimize the power scheduling of individual converters online.
an overall efficiency curve for any arrangement of converters
results. The selection of the most efficient converter arrange-
II. P ROCEDURE OF OPTIMIZATION
ment out of a set of considered converter configurations is
the second step of optimization, as shown in Figure 3. The As mentioned, the comparison of different converter arrange-
individual power requirement of the connected device (sink or ments is only significant with consideration of the operation
source) can be investigated using power demand profiles. The strategy aiming on highest efficiency. For this the overall effi-
power profiles show the power ranges which are frequently ciency curve can be used as an objective function. Neglecting
required/provided by the device. energy storage elements, the equation of the overall efficiency
curve is
With knowledge about the power profile the best combina-
tion of different converters can be selected. For this purpose, PSI
a weighting function can be calculated, which is based on S (PSO , PSI ) = (1)
PSO
the power profile and also the information of the absolute
power losses at each operation point. This weighting function where S is the efficiency, PSO is the power of the source and
is multiplied with the overall efficiency curve, the integral of PSI is the power of the sink of the overall system. That means
the resultant curve represents the cumulated weighted overall that PSO is the summmarized power on the source side of
efficiency for the investigated arrangement. all parallel connected converters and PSI is the summmarized
power on the sink side of all parallel-connected converters, as
shown in Figure 1. This results in
Efficiency curves of n
Arrangement
converters (1...n)
P
PSI,i
PSI i=1
S (PSO , PSI ) = = Pn (2)
PSO
PSO,i
i=1
Nonlinear Either the power on the sink or on the source side deter-
Most efficient mines the setpoint, depending on the application1 . Therefore
optimization
operation strategy two equation are utilized for the optimization process. For
algorithm
applications with fixed power on the sink side results
n
! n
!1
X X PSI,i
S (PSI ) = PSI,i (3)
Interpolation, i=1 i=1
i (PSI,i )
weighting and Power profile
integration
and for applications with fixed power on the source side
accordingly
n
! n !1
X X
Most efficient S (PSO ) = PSO,i i (PSO,i ) PSO,i (4)
Storage of the i=1 i=1
arrangement for
results
the application
In order to determine the optimal operating strategy for
the sharing of power in all operating points, these equations
Fig. 3. Fundamental procedure of the presented method. can be used as an objective functions and maximized for each
operating point. The objective function is in general nonlinear
This procedure is executed for all considered options, the
1 For a better understanding two examples for this: a) If a PV system is
most efficient arrangement is identified and selected. Accord-
connected to the grid, the PV system is the source and the grid is the sink.
ingly, this method provides both, a power profile dependent The source power is set by the application. b) If a heater is conneced to the
recommendation for the most efficient converter combination grid the grid is the source and the heater is the sink. The sink power is set
and the optimal operating strategy for this arrangement. by the application.
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and can be optimized with several different optimization plane shows the power split of PSI,1 and PSI,2 at the most
methods for nonlinear optimization. The optimization problem efficient operating points. The resolution of 1kW and the
can be formulated for sinks as rated power of 200kW leads to 200 operating points. If no
enhanced optimization method is used, 1002 calculations of
minimize S (PSI,1 , , PSI,n ) (5) the objective function are necessary to find the most efficient
PSI,1 , ,PSI,n
n power split. However, in this case it is recommended to follow
this approach, because it avoids solutions in local maxima
X
subject to PSI,i = PSI (6)
i=1
without any additional efforts and within few seconds.
PSI [0, PR ] (7)
Areas of local maxima
S / %
80
points (0, , PR ) and to choose the most efficient one. 75
This may require much calculation time, depending on the 70
number of considered converters. However, this method has 65
the advantage of always calculating the global maximum. 60
and can be represented for each combination of PSI,1 and PSI,2 For better clarity the optimization results are presented in
as shown in Figure 5. The sum of PSI,1 and PSI,2 results to the two 2D diagrams in Figure 7. The first diagram shows the
required power of the sink PSI in this specific operating point. efficiency curves of the inverter and the resulting systems
The optimization result is a trajectory of the most efficient efficiency curve. The second diagram shows the most efficient
operation points for 0 PSI 200 kW (resolution of 1kW). power split at each operating point. These can directly be used
The projection of the trajectory onto the horizontal bottom in a lookup table to operate the system.
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90 Stepwise
90
Symmetrical
85 Optimized
85 Efficiency of single converter
80
80 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
100 P / kW
80 Fig. 9. Total efficiency curves of a set of converter of same kind.
P / kW
60
40 Obviously stepwise activating operation has the advantage
20 of much higher efficiency for small power (Figure 9, blue line),
but less efficiency in the middle power range, compared to
0
symmetrical power split (Figure 9, green line). The red line
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 in Figure 9 shows the efficiency curve of an optimal power
PSI / kW split strategy between the four converters. Here the advantage
of an optimal power split becomes very clear. The resulting
Fig. 8. Exemplary result of the optimization for an arrangement with six efficiency curve enables better efficiency than the other two
different converters. methods in a wide range of operation.
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Figure 10 shows the switching strategy to split the power results in the resulting power ranges. Figure 11 shows an
among the converters for symmetrical power split (upper plot), exemplary power profile as a histogram which is determined
stepwise power split (middle plot) and for one optimal strategy as described. The profile shows the power of a sink (e.g. a
(lower plot). three step heater). For further processing, this power profile
is interpolated and normalized with the respective appropriate
Converter 1 Converter 3 power in each point, which leads to a weighting function as
Converter 2 Converter 4 shown in Figure 11.
Symmetrical power split
10
25 Power profile
20 Interpolated power profile
8 Weighting function
P / kW
15
10
h(PSI) / %
6
5
0 4
Stepwise power split
25
2
20
P / kW
15
0
10 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
5 PSI / kW
0
Fig. 11. Sink power profile and the resulting weighting function.
Optimized power split
25
The same procedure can also be used to extract a power
20 profile for sources. An example for this is shown in Figure 12,
P / kW
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1
h(P) / %
PSI / kW
0.8
Fig. 10. Optimal power split strategy between 4 different converter. 0.6
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where variable J is the weighted accumulated efficiency for which is suitable to summarize the influences and information
the arrangement k and m is the number of considered arrange- and can be easily used to compare different arrangements for a
ments. This approach is similar to the weighted efficiency for specific application. This is completely independent from the
PV converters (e.g. EUR or CEC explained in [6]) but explicit kind of application, which can be sources like PV and wind
for the considered application. The higher the value of J, power but also sinks like heaters or elevators.
the lower the losses of the respective arrangement k for the
considered power profile. The arrangement k with the highest VII. S YMBOLS AND INDICES
value of J should be selected to achieve highest efficiency.
TABLE I. E XPLANATION OF USED SYMBOLS AND INDICES
If the price of different arrangements should also be included
in the comparison, the values of J can be used to create a Symbol Meaning
cost-benefit ratio function. fw Weighting function
Jk weighted accumulated efficiency for arrangement k
and power profile normalized to the rated power
V. E XEMPLARY RESULT
i Efficiency of converter i
The shown power profiles of the section before are used for an S Efficiency of the converter arrangement
exemplary result of the described method, using 19 different S,opt Optimized efficiency of the converter arrangement
arrangements. For each arrangement an efficiency optimized n Number of converters in arrangement
power split is calculated and weighted with both power pro- m Number of arrangements
files. The resulting values for Jk,r with k = [1, 2, , 19] and r Index of power profile
r = [A, B] are shown in Figure 13. k Index of arrangement
PR Rated power of the converter arrangement
1.2 Result for power profile A
PSI Power on sink side
-1
0 R EFERENCES
0 5 10 15 20
[1] H. Wetzel, N. Frhleke, J. Bcker, P. Ide, High Efficient 3kW Three-
Arrangement Stage Power Supply", Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC)
and Exposition, 2006. APEC 06. Twenty-First Annual IEEE, pp. 1361-
Fig. 13. Results of an optimization process for 19 different arrangements. 1367, 2006.
[2] B. Burger, D. Kranzer, Extreme High Efficiency PV-Power Converters",
In order to enhance comprehension of comparison of the Power Electronics and Applications, 2009. EPE 09. 13th European
Conference on, 2009.
different arrangements, the representation of J is normalized
by [J min(J)]max(J min(J))1 . The results can directly [3] J. Nocedal, S. Wright, Numerical Optimization", Springer Sci-
ence+Business Media, New York, 2nd Edition, 2006.
be used to choose the efficiency optimal arrangement based
[4] L. Liberti, N. Maculan, Global Optimization: From Theory to Imple-
on the power profile. It becomes clear that the power profile mentation", Springer Science+Business Media, New York, 2006.
has significant influence on the choice, e.g. the converter [5] J. Pintr, Global Optimization in Action, Continuous and Lipschitz
arrangement 14 is suited for the best application with power Optimization", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996.
profile B but not with power profile A. The same applies for [6] European Standard, EN 50530:2010 - Overall efficiency of grid con-
arrangement 11 the other way round. nected photovoltaic inverters", 2010
VI. C ONCLUSION
The presented method facilitates the choice of an arrangement
of converters based on efficiency considerations for a specific
application. It becomes clear, that the efficiency optimal op-
erating strategy and choice of an arrangement are coupled.
The result of a simple example shows that, even if there are
only two converters working in parallel, optimized operating
strategies are not trivial. The approach proposes the variable J,
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