Under the determined impulse of the European Union to limit the environmental impact of energy-related services, the electricity sector will face several challenges in coming years. Integrating renewable energy sources in the distribution networks is certainly one of the most urging issues to be tackled with. The current grid and production structure cannot absorb the high penetration shares anticipated for 2020 without putting at risk the entire system. The innovative concept of smart grid offers promising solutions and interesting implementation possibilities. The objective of the thesis is to specifically study the technical and economic benefits that the creation of an aggregator on the Swedish island of Gotland would imply. Comparing Gotland's power system characteristics to the broad variety of solutions offered by demand side management, wind power integration enhancement by demand response appeared particularly suited. A business case, specifically oriented towards the minimisation of transmission losses by adapting the electric heat load of private households to the local wind production was designed. Numerical simulations have been conducted, evaluating the technical and economic outcomes, along with the environmental benets, under the current conditions on Gotland. Sensitivity analyses were also performed to determine the key parameters for a successful implementation. A prospective scenario for 2020, with the addition of electric vehicles, has finally been simulated to estimate the long term profitability of an aggregator on the island. The simulation results indicate that despite patent technical benefits for the distribution network, the studied service would not be profitable in the current situation on Gotland. This, because the transmission losses through the HVDC-cable concern limited amounts of power that are purchased on a market characterized by relatively cheap prices and low volatility. Besides, the high fixed costs the aggregator has to face to install technical equipment in every household constitutes another barrier to its setting up.

With the development of information technology, power management for telecom and computer applications become a large market for power supply industries. To meet the performance and reliability requirement, distributed power system (DPS) is widely adopted for telecom and computer systems, because of its modularity, maintainability and high reliability. Due to limited space and increasing power consumption, power supplies for telecom and server systems are required to deliver more power with smaller volume. As the key component of DPS system, front-end AC/DC converter is under the pressure of continuously increasing power density. For conventional industry practices, some limitations prevents front-end converter meeting the power density requirement. In this dissertation, different techniques have been investigated to improve power density of front-end AC/DC converters. For PFC stage, at low switching frequency, PFC inductor size is large and limits the power density. Although increasing switching frequency can dramatically reduce PFC inductor size, EMI filter size might be larger at higher switching frequency because of the change of noise spectrum. Since the relationship between EMI filter size and PFC switching frequency is unclear for industry, PFC circuits always operate with switching frequency lower than 150 kHz. Based on the EMI filter design method, together with a simple EMI noise prediction model, relationship between EMI filter corner frequency and PFC switching frequency was revealed. The analysis shows that switching frequency of PFC circuit should be higher than 400 kHz, so that both PFC inductor and EMI filter size can be reduced. Although theoretical analysis and experimental results verify the benefits of high switching frequency PFC, it is essential to find a suitable topology that allows high switching frequency operation while maintains high efficiency. Three PFC topologies, single switch PFC, three-level PFC with range switch and dual Boost PFC, were evaluated with analysis and experiments. By using advanced semiconductor devices, together with proposed control methods, these topologies could achieve high efficiency at high switching frequency. Thus, the benefits of high frequency PFC can be realized. In front-end converter, large holdup time capacitor size is another barrier for power density improvement. To meet the holdup time requirement, bulky holdup time capacitor is normally used to provide energy during holdup time. Holdup time capacitor requirement can be reduced by using wider input voltage range DC/DC converte. Because LLC resonant converter can realized with input voltage range without sacrificing its normal operation efficiency, it becomes an attractive solution for DC/DC stage of front-end converters. Moreover, its small switching loss allows it operating at MHz switching frequency and achieves smaller passive component size. However, lack of design methodology makes the topology difficult to be implemented. An optimal design methodology for LLC resonant converter has been developed based on the analysis on the circuit during normal operation condition and holdup time. The design method is verified by a 1 MHz switching frequency LLC resonant converter with 76W/in3 power density. When front-end converter operates at high switching frequency, negative effects of circuit parasitics become more pronounced. By integrating active devices together with their gate drivers, Active Integrated power electronics module (IPEM) can largely reduce circuit parasitics. Therefore, switching loss and voltage stress on switching devices can be reduced. Moreover, IPEM concept can be extended into passive integration and EMI filter integration By using this power integration technology, power density and circuit performance of front-end converter can be improved, which is verified by theoretical analysis and experimental results. / Ph. D.