Effectiveness of UPQC in Mitigating Harmonics Generated by an Induction Furnace

Abstract

Majority of the loads involved in the operation of a steel plant are non-linear. An induction furnace is one distinctive case of a non-linear load, the growth of which has been a boon to the steel industry. Harmonics generated with the operation of an induction furnace under fluctuating load result in large power losses and have negative effect on the neighboring loads. A large number of custom power devices are available to improve the power quality of the system. The objective of this paper is harmonic mitigation in an induction furnace using a Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC). Its performance in terms of its ability to mitigate the voltage and current harmonics under non-sinusoidal conditions is investigated. A Simulink model of the induction furnace, whose performance matches the real-time data measured from a steel plant induction furnace in operation, is used in the studies. Results of the studies performed show that UPQC can provide significant improvement in terms of the total harmonic distortion of an induction furnace over a distributed synchronous compensator.