Cross domain fusion in power electronics dominated distribution grids

Abstract

In the near future, a drastic change in the structure of the electric grid is expected due to the increasing penetration of power electronics interfaced renewable energy sources (e.g. solar and wind), highly variable loads (e.g. electric vehicles and air conditioning) and unexpected energy demanding events (e.g. pandemics or natural disasters). Energy balancing management, voltage and frequency stability, reduced system inertia, grid resilience to fault conditions, and power quality of the supply are a few of the main challenges in the future power electronics dominated grids. Power electronics can solve these by integrating information and communication technology in new intelligent, highly reliable, and efficient devices like smart transformers. Smart transformers can increase the power flow flexibility by enabling the correct meshed-hybrid grid operations, as long as load mission and power generation profiles are known. Those profile are generally driven by heterogeneous, highly sparse and often incomplete data that belong to different domains. This article highlights the necessity of new approaches and models to identify patterns and events of interest that can serve as a common base. The resulting patterns can then be cross-fused in a common language and form the basis of further data analytics in future distribution grids.