Grid Forming Power Converters

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Special Issue of Energies on “Grid Forming Power Converters”.

We are currently witnessing one of the most prominent changes in power systems, since global efforts for transitioning toward sustainable clean energy scenarios have paved the way to a new conception of power systems, which will be broadly dominated by green energy sources interfaced to the grid through power electronics.

Currently, most of renewable energy sources, generally known for being intermittent and technologically diverse, are connected to the grid through power converters operating in grid-following mode, i.e. injecting electrons ‘into the pipe’, without taking care on maintaining such a pipe in a good shape. This incapability for contributing to maintain a healthy grid has caused several infamous instability incidents in the last few years, which actually have hindered large scale integration of renewable energy in power systems.

As a solution to overcome such an obstacle, power converters based on an alternative grid-forming control approach has gained popularity in the last years, since they are not only able to create and maintain a stable grid through self-coordination of frequency and voltage control, but also provide grid support functionalities such as black start, inertia response, and power oscillation damping.

Although grid-forming power converters have been proven to be effective theoretically within the academic community, the wide adoption for actual deployment in power systems is still limited due to the lack of familiarity and confidence from system operators, which requires a dissemination effort from the scientific community to explain their main features and benefits.

This special issue is aimed to disseminate recent advances, development, and piloting on the grid-forming power converter, where we invite researchers and industry experts to contribute research papers and review articles on the state of the art and future.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Grid-forming control and implementation methods
• Modelling and simulation of grid-forming converter-based systems
• Analysis of distribution and transmission networks dominated by grid-forming power converters
• Application of grid-forming power converters in improving stability of power systems
• Flexibility and ancillary grid services provided by grid-forming power converters
• Power quality improvement and power oscillations damping through grid-forming power converters
• Microgrids and islanded networks based on grid-forming power converters
• Grid-forming power converters in multi-terminal and hybrid dc networks
• Renewable power plants based on grid-forming power converters
• FACTS and other grid support systems based on grid-forming power converters
• Impact analysis of grid-forming power converters in hybrid generation power systems
• Implementation, field deployment, and demos of utility-scale grid-forming power converters
• Development of guidelines, standards and regulations for power systems based on grid forming power converters

Prof. Dr. Pedro Rodriguez
Prof. Dr. Xiongfei Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Grid-forming power converter
• Power-convert-dominated networks
• Grid-interactive power converters
• Virtual synchronous machine
• Distributed generation
• Microgrids
• Control of power converters
• Power electronics
• Electrical networks