A Survey of DC Microgrid Architectures and Converters for Vertical Farming

With the worldwide development of vertical farming, direct-current (dc) microgrid has been paid more and more attention due to its efficiency and effectiveness. A survey on its power architectures and converters is addressed in this paper. As electricity consumers, the electrical functional blocks of facility agriculture are briefed and their power demands are described based on a typical vertical farm. The radial and double-end de microgrid distribution networks are depicted and their features are highlighted, respectively. Other complicated architectures are not recommended in vertical farm applications. To reduce the power loss, two types of efficient circuit topology are specified, multi-phase interleaved converters and low-voltage-stress converters. Compared with isolated or soft-switched topologies, they are more practical due to their cost-effectiveness. Take the advantages of wide-band devices, dc microgrids may help vertical farms improve their competitions by decreasing the power consumption and increasing the distribution performance.