IEEE Electrification - September 2020 - 17

networks will make the future grid much more observable and controllable. The grid will be able to host
intermittent renewable energy and become more robust
against natural disasters and disturbances. Energy will
be locally generated and consumed within a distribution grid, yielding significantly reduced stress on the
transmission level. Innovations in grid operation and
novel business models, such as demand response and
peer-to-peer energy trading, will create value chains
and foster an ecosystem to close the cycle for technical innovation.
With the electric grid delivering more than 50% of the
societal energy consumption, the energy flow carried by
the electric grid is mixing with the data flow on the information network, the pricing of electricity, and the geographical footprint of carbon emission. The security,
privacy, and functionality of the electric grid; the transportation network; and the telecommunication network are
coupling together. As more and more power electronics
devices are installed at the grid edge, the one-way unidirectional power and information flow in the traditional
electric grid will be replaced by the multiway bidirectional
power and information flow in the future grid, and the
optimal way of operating such an electric grid is still
unknown. A wide range of economic, societal, and technical challenges need solutions coming from multidisciplinary systems thinking.

Conclusion
The opportunities of investigating high-frequency power
electronics at the grid edge are driven by fundamental
technologies and motivated by high-impact applications.
The performance benefits of high-frequency power electronics will reduce the initial cost barrier for technical
innovation. The new functions and capabilities of high-frequency power electronics will make them attractive for
large-scale adoption, further reducing the cost. The challenges for large-scale deployment of high-frequency power
electronics exist in the "transition." How do we seamlessly
switch from the current "grid-following" mode to the
future "grid-forming" mode, without sacrificing the reliability, resiliency, and low cost of providing electricity?
Recent progress in other industries (e.g., transportation
electrification, 5G communication, and IoT) are accelerating this transition. From small-scale solar-powered data
centers to "net-zero" distribution substations that support
large numbers of megawatt-level EV charging stations, a
"bottom-up" approach, rooted in technologies and thriving
in applications, can maximize the economic incentive of
embedding distributed intelligence in power electronics,
while mitigating the political, technical, economic, and
societal barriers associated with the transition.

IEEE Power Electron. Mag., vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 16-22, Dec. 2014. doi:
10.1109/MPEL.2014.2360811.
W. Tushar et al., "Grid influenced peer-to-peer energy trading," IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1407-1418, Mar.
2020. doi: 10.1109/TSG.2019.2937981.
G. Giaconi, D. Gündüz, and H. V. Poor, "Privacy-aware smart
metering: Progress and challenges," IEEE Signal Process. Mag.,
vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 59-78, Nov. 2018. doi: 10.1109/MSP.2018.
2841410.
H. Zhang, H. Zhang, L. Song, Y. Li, Z. Han, and H. V. Poor,
"Peer-to-peer energy trading in DC packetized power
microgrids," IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 17-30,
Jan. 2020. doi: 10.1109/JSAC.2019.2951991.
S. Y. Hui, C. K. Lee, and F. F. Wu, "Electric springs: A new
smart grid technology," IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 3, no. 3, pp.
1552-1561, Sept. 2012. doi: 10.1109/TSG.2012.2200701.
D. J. Perreault et al., "Opportunities and challenges in very
high frequency power conversion," in Proc. 2009 24th Annu.
IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conf. and Exposition, Washington,
D.C., pp. 1-14. doi: 10.1109/APEC.2009.4802625.
C. R. Sullivan, B. A. Reese, A. L. F. Stein, and P. A. Kyaw, "On
size and magnetics: Why small efficient power inductors are
rare," in Proc. 2016 Int. Symp. 3D Power Electronics Integration and
Manufacturing (3D-PEIM), Raleigh, NC, pp. 1-23. doi:
10.1109/3DPEIM.2016.7570571.
M. Chen, M. Araghchini, K. K. Afridi, J. H. Lang, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, "A systematic approach to modeling
impedances and current distribution in planar magnetics,"
IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 560-580, Jan. 2016.
doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2015.2411618.
S. Lim, D. M. Otten, and D. J. Perreault, "New ac-dc power
factor correction architecture suitable for high-frequency
operation," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 2937-
2949, Apr. 2016. doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2015.2445927.
B. Van Tassell et al., "Metacapacitors: Printed thin film,
flexible capacitors for power conversion applications," IEEE
Trans. Power Electron., vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 2695-2708, Apr. 2016.
doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2015.2448529.
Y. Lei et al., "A 2-kW single-phase seven-level flying capacitor multilevel inverter with an active energy buffer," IEEE
Trans. Power Electron., vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 8570-8581, Nov. 2017.
doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2017.2650140.
J. A. Anderson, E. J. Hanak, L. Schrittwieser, M. Guacci, J. W.
Kolar, and G. Deboy, "All-silicon 99.35% efficient three-phase
seven-level hybrid neutral point clamped/flying capacitor
inverter," CPSS Trans. Power Electron. Applicat., vol. 4, no. 1, pp.
50-61, Mar. 2019. doi: 10.24295/CPSSTPEA.2019.00006.
M. Chen, S. Chakraborty, and D. J. Perreault, "Multitrack
power factor correction architecture," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 2454-2466, Mar. 2019. doi: 10.1109/
TPEL.2018.2847284.
Y. Chen, P. Wang, Y. Elasser, and M. Chen, "Multicell reconfigurable multi-input multi-output energy router architecture," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., 2020, to be published. doi:
10.1109/TPEL.2020.2996199.
T. Roinila, M. Vilkko, and J. Sun, "Online grid impedance
measurement using discrete-interval binary sequence injection," IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Topics Power Electron., vol. 2, no. 4, pp.
985-993, Dec. 2014. doi: 10.1109/JESTPE.2014.2357494.

Biographies
Minjie Chen (minjie@princeton.edu) is with Princeton Uni-

For Further Reading
D. Divan, R. Moghe, and A. Prasai, "Power electronics at the
grid edge: The key to unlocking value from the smart grid,"

versity, New Jersey.

H. Vincent Poor (poor@princeton.edu) is with Princeton
University, New Jersey.
	

IEEE Elec trific ation Magazine / S EP T EM BE R 2 0 2 0

17
IEEE Electrification - September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification - September 2020
