An Overview of the Role of Solid State Transformer in Smart Grid

The power quality of electrical grid is becoming vulnerable to transients and other power quality issues due to the continuous penetration of renewable energy resources (RERs) and other distributed generations (DGs) into the grid. However, the efforts made in transforming the conventional grids into smart ones with improved communication and control have yielded significant improvement in terms of power quality and other ancillary functionalities. To facilitate this further, solid state transformer (SST) have been proposed as the most aiding device for ensuring flexibility and intelligence, increased interconnection possibilities, improved reliability, voltage and current control, frequency stability as well as power quality improvement in the smart grid. This paper provides an overview of the basic functionalities of SST in smart grid.