An electric power information acquisition unit is provided for acquiring power supply-and-demand information including electric power acceptable to an electric power system or information correlated with the electric power. A fluid information acquisition unit is provided for acquiring fluid information including information correlated with a physical quantity of a fluid flowing out of a channel. A controller is provided for controlling at least one of the physical quantity, the channel or electric power generated or electric power to be generated by a generator by using the fluid information so that the physical quantity becomes equal to a desired value, while controlling electric power to be supplied to the electric power system to the electric power acceptable to the electric power system or less, by using the power supply-and-demand information.

A DC to AC converter is configured to convert DC power from a floating DC power source to AC power having a desired voltage and waveform. A plurality of capacitors is charged to discrete voltages from the DC power. A switching network selectively connects the capacitors in series to an AC output node. For selected capacitors, either the associated voltage or the inverse of the associated voltage is summed together (non-selected capacitors contribute zero volts to the sum). The sum voltage is output to the AC output node at two values, and the voltage is jittered between these two values at a high frequency in order to approximate intermediate values. The two values jittered between, and the values and timing of the intermediate values, are controlled to construct a desired waveform, such as an approximation to a sine wave.

A power generation system includes a plurality of photovoltaic cell panels for outputting DC power, a plurality of inverters for converting DC power into AC power, and a high-order device for communicating with the plurality of inverters. The high-order device is configured to acquire a predetermined power factor, and transmit a command value to each of the plurality of inverters so that the power factor corresponding to the predetermined power factor is achieved by a total output of the plurality of inverters. The high-order device is configured so as to determine a specific inverter that has room to increase the amount of reactive power output from among the plurality of inverters, to transmit a reactive power increasing command value for increasing reactive power to the specific inverter.

A power source and power management system including: a controller configured to transmit tracking information of the power source and power management system; an energy harvesting power source; a non-degrading rechargeable power source electrically connected to the energy harvesting power source and configured to be recharged by energy generated by the energy harvesting power source; and a power manager configured to control switching of a system power source between the energy harvesting power source and the non-degrading rechargeable power source based on a power state of the energy harvesting power source and a power state of the non-degrading rechargeable power source.

A DC to AC converter is configured to convert DC power from a floating DC power source to AC power having a desired voltage and waveform. A plurality of capacitors is charged to discrete voltages from the DC power. A switching network selectively connects the capacitors in series to an AC output node. For selected capacitors, either the associated voltage or the inverse of the associated voltage is summed together (non-selected capacitors contribute zero volts to the sum). The sum voltage is output to the AC output node at two values, and the voltage is jittered between these two values at a high frequency in order to approximate intermediate values. The two values jittered between, and the values and timing of the intermediate values, are controlled to construct a desired waveform, such as an approximation to a sine wave.

An electric power information acquisition unit is provided for acquiring power supply-and-demand information including electric power acceptable to an electric power system or information correlated with the electric power. A fluid information acquisition unit is provided for acquiring fluid information including information correlated with a physical quantity of a fluid flowing out of a channel. A controller is provided for controlling at least one of the physical quantity, the channel or electric power generated or electric power to be generated by a generator by using the fluid information so that the physical quantity becomes equal to a desired value, while controlling electric power to be supplied to the electric power system to the electric power acceptable to the electric power system or less, by using the power supply-and-demand information.

Apparatus and methods for recovering energy in a petroleum, petrochemical, or chemical plant as described. The apparatus includes a fluid process stream flowing through a petroleum, petrochemical, or chemical process zone. There are at least one variable-resistance power-recovery turbine, a portion of the first process stream flowing through the first power-recovery turbine to generate electric power as direct current therefrom. There is a single DC to AC inverter electrically connected to at least one power-recovery turbine, and the output of the DC to AC inverter electrically connected to a first substation.

A DC to AC converter is described in which DC power presented as a set of relatively floating DC power sources of differing DC voltage values is converted to a desired AC power waveform by combining the DC voltage values with sequential sets of associated ternary-valued multiplicative weights of +1, 1, or 0, and summing the weighted voltage values, so as to produce voltage points on the desired waveform at appropriate time instants.

A generator system can include a generator configured to produce an output of alternating current (AC), a rectifier connected to the generator to rectify the AC into direct current (DC) rectifier output, an inverter connected to the rectifier to receive the DC rectifier output and configured to output three phase AC inverter output, and a plurality of output lines connected to the inverter to receive the three phase AC inverter output. The system can include a control module configured to control the output of the inverter. The control module can be operatively connected to one or more of the output lines via one or more local sense leads to receive a local feedback. The control module can be configured to control the inverter as a function of the local feedback to provide one or more of protection and/or voltage regulation. The control module can be connected to one or more point of reference (POR) leads configured to be connected to a POR on a plurality of load input lines of a load to provide POR feedback to the control module. The control module can be configured to control the inverter to provide harmonic correction as a function of the POR feedback.

A power generation system includes a plurality of photovoltaic cell panels for outputting DC power, a plurality of inverters for converting DC power into AC power, and a high-order device for communicating with the plurality of inverters. The high-order device is configured to acquire a predetermined power factor, and transmit a command value to each of the plurality of inverters so that the power factor corresponding to the predetermined power factor is achieved by a total output of the plurality of inverters. The high-order device is configured so as to determine a specific inverter that has room to increase the amount of reactive power output from among the plurality of inverters, to transmit a reactive power increasing command value for increasing reactive power to the specific inverter.