Power Converters Design for Hybrid LV ac/dc Microgrids

Hybrid LV ac/dc microgrids are being considered for commercial buildings which bring new design requirements for the multiport converter aimed to interface both ac and de grids. In this paper, we explore the potential to use two well developed topologies for this targeted application. An optimization-based genetic algorithm which allows to find the best possible choices among different off-the-shelf components technology is developed in order to carry out a comparative design for the selected topology, i.e., the modular multilevel converter and the two-level voltage source converter. It is shown that to handle the active power requirement in this application, it is more efficient to have lower converter units connected in parallel. However, more units are needed when using a 2-L voltage source converter.