Introduction

This introductory chapter presents the challenges currently posed in the electricity sector due to the increasing penetration of distributed and concentrated Renewable Energy Sources (ress), as well as high voltage direct current (hvdc) systems. In this context, electric power system simulation is crucial, since it allows assessing the impact of these elements at different stages, such as the design phase and real-time operation. However, modern simulators are not capable of efficiently simulating the power electronics converters typically employed as grid interfaces for ress and hvdc systems. As a result, commercial simulators need to be updated by implementing more advanced simulation and computational techniques. After summarising these issues, the chapter introduces the technology this book focuses on: the modular multilevel converter.