Bi-Directional Power Flow in Switchgear with Static Transfer Switch Applied at Various Renewable Energies

Abstract

In this study, we describe the development of a plug-in type of switchgear that can control bidirectional power flow. This switchgear system can connect distributed generations such as photovoltaic and wind turbine generation, and AC and DC loads. The proposed switchgear system consists of an inverter for connecting distributed generations and DC load, a static transfer switch (STS) that can control and interrupt the bidirectional power flow, and an intelligent electronic device (IED) that can control each facility using a communication system. Since the topology inside the switchgear is composed of DC bus, it can be operated as a plug-in type of system that can be used by simply connecting the converters of various distributed generations to the inverter in the developed switchgear system. In this study, we describe the overall structure of the proposed switchgear system and the operation of the components. In addition, prototypes of each facility are developed and the results of building a small testbed are presented. Finally, we verify the operation of the inverter by performing an experiment on the testbed and show that throughout a test sequence the proposed switchgear system works normally. The contributions of this study are the development of a plug-in type of switchgear for AC/DC and the actual test results presented through prototype development and testbed configuration.