A comparative study of energy storage systems based on modular multilevel converters

Abstract

With the rapid increase of renewable sources connected to the grid, a viable solution to ensure its stability is by deploying distributed Energy Storage Systems (ESS) along the grid. ESS should be capable of managing high-power ratings in short periods of time, thus supercapacitors (SCs) are attractive candidates to fulfill this requirement. ESS topologies based on the Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) are both expandable and scalable in a manner that avoids the complexity of current systems. In this paper, we present a comparative study of multiple ESS through numerical simulations together with an application optimization for different scenarios.