Change of paradigm in power electronic converters used in renewable energy applications

Recent investigations on the nature of power electronic converters in renewable energy applications have revealed that most of the converters are not what they are claimed to be. The voltage-type sources have dominated as power sources especially in the past. Therefore, most of the power electronic converters are developed and designed for such applications even if some of them are known as current-sourced converters. The rapidly growing number of renewable-energy-based distributed systems has forced to pay closer attention to the structure of those systems and especially on the nature of power electronic converters within the systems. This paper summarizes the recent findings and states that most of the power electronic converters within the renewable energy systems are real current-fed converters, which have totally different static and dynamic properties compared to the conventional voltage-fed converters.