The distribution network that connects generating plants to homes, buildings, factories, vehicles, cities and other sectors continues to require upgrades for reliability and resiliency. By employing advanced, connected sensors in generation, transmission and distribution, grid operators can monitor health and safety needs, optimize old and costly assets, detect faults and increases in demand, and restore power more quickly during an outage.

Data from grid assets gives operators greater insight into infrastructure performance, including different generation mixes, environmental conditions or security risks. Smart grid sensors enable the remote monitoring of equipment such as transformers and power lines, and facilitate demand-side resource management. Smart grid sensors can also monitor weather events and power-line temperatures in order to calculate a line’s carrying capacity. A variety of wired and wireless protocols such as industrial Ethernet, RS-485, Controller Area Network and Wireless Smart Utility Network (Wi-SUN) can communicate the information gathered by the sensors.

On the load side, smart meters help consumers ease the migration toward more renewable energy solutions in their homes as well as for charging their EVs. Smart meters can also help consumers make better choices based on energy needs and sources. And in other cases, such meters can help monitor for bidirectional charging, such as when homes or cars return energy to the grid.

What was once a network of electromechanical systems with minimal feedback and passive loads has become highly automated and driven by intelligent devices and modernization strategies. The result is a more interconnected power delivery network – from generation to transmission and from distribution to end use – integrating distributed energy resources and ensuring greater grid reliability and resiliency.

Traditionally, the power grid has been a “one-way street,” with power flowing from utility-owned centralized generation, transmission and distribution lines toward consumers. As solar and wind energy start to make up a greater share of the electric grid, dynamic management will become more prevalent. Utilities have come to view the electric grid as more of an interconnected web, with a small but growing number of consumers generating electricity with small-scale, distributed systems. In other words, homes and vehicles may alternate between acting as energy consumption and generation units.

Solar and wind energy have zero carbon emissions, and unlike fossil fuels, are not affected by price volatility. More and more regions (especially those with abundant sunlight or wind and a high cost of electricity) have reached grid parity – the point at which renewable energy is equal to or cheaper than the cost of fossil fuel.

Solar microinverters are an integral segment of the solar power industry. Texas Instruments (TI) has a comprehensive selection of isolated and non-isolated gate drivers, digital isolators, Ethernet and RS-485 transceivers, current-sensing and voltage monitoring devices, and microcontrollers (MCUs) that can handle digital control loops targeted at all sizes of inverters, both grid-tied and off-grid, to maximize system efficiency and extend product life spans. All of these products must operate in the harshest environments, especially in extreme temperatures.

And while the electric distribution system was originally designed and built to serve peak demand and passively deliver power through a radial infrastructure, a smart grid not only facilitates more customer choice but can be managed locally, remotely or automatically. The smart grid enables utilities to keep up with changes in consumer behavior (for example, most EV battery charging at home will likely take place at night during off-peak hours).

The highest-performing EVs feature onboard chargers in the 22-kW range. The idea of bidirectional chargers brings along with it the possibility of using an EV as a battery storage element. Say that the EV in the garage can go 400 miles on one charge. But through communications, cloud computing and the modernized grid, the car “knows” that the owner is not going to drive more than 50 miles tomorrow. The battery does not technically have to be full at 7 a.m., so energy could be pulled out of the car overnight for local consumption or put back into the grid during peak hours. Similar approaches exist in the public charging infrastructure, while also achieving load balance between stations.

Additionally, improving grid power quality and reducing the drawn harmonic currents requires power factor correction, as many of the forward loads are DC. For example, in an offboard fast EV charger operating at 350 kW, the input is a three-phase AC connection from the grid, and the output to the battery is DC.

Many topologies exist for active three-phase power factor correction. The 10-kW, Bidirectional Three-Phase Three-Level (T-Type) Inverter and PFC Reference Design is capable of bidirectional power correction and uses silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) with higher switching frequencies to improve efficiency and shrink the size of magnetics, thus reducing overall system size. This topology is scalable to higher-power smart grid applications such as EV charging and solar inverters. SiC MOSFETs with lower switching losses ensure higher DC bus voltages (up to 800 V) and a peak efficiency >97%.

As part of TI’s continued investment in the future of the grid, TI is advancing the components required to enable EV charging, both on the charger connected to the grid as well as the battery-management system within EVs. With the potential for high voltage from the grid and from EV batteries, isolated devices are essential for any EV charging or battery-management system design. These devices include communication and protection circuitry such as isolated and non-isolated amplifiers, isolated and non-isolated interface integrated circuits, and power for signal isolators.