Improve Power Quality with High Power UPQC

Abstract

An ideal AC power transmission is pure sinusoidal, both its voltage and its current. With the increasing production of modern industry, more and more power electronic equipments are used and cause serious current distortion because of open and close of power electronic devices. Harmonic, a measurement of distorted degree of voltage or current, reflects the deviation from sinusoidal wave. Another cause of harmonic is nonlinear loads such as Arc furnaces and transformers. The widely using of nonlinear load brings much harmonic current to transmission lines. The harmonic current passes through transmission lines and causes harmonic voltage exert on the loads in other place(Terciyanli et al. 2011). As a result, the loss of power transmission is increased and the safety of power grid is seriously weakened. With the fast development of modern production, the harmonic in power grid become more and more serious and people pay more attention to how to eliminate harmonic(wen et al. 2010). Active Power Filter (APF) is a promising tool to cut down the influence of harmonics, shunt APF for harmonic current, series APF for harmonic voltage. Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC), consisted of shunt APF and series APF, is effective to reduce both harmonic voltage and harmonic current. Now, UPQC is mainly used in low-voltage lowcapacity applications. But with the development of power system, more and more highpower nonlinear loads are connected to higher voltage grid and the demand of high voltage and high capacity keeps being enlarged. The paper discussed a high power UPQC for high power nonlinear loads. In this UPQC, shunt APF uses a hybrid APF which includes a Passive Power Filter (PPF) and an APF. Shunt APF is connected to a series LC resonance circuit in grid fundamental frequency so as to make shunt APF in lower voltage and lower power. The series LC resonance circuit is connected to grid with a capacitor. DC linker of PPF is connected to DC link of APF. This type of UPQC is fit for high voltage high power application because the voltage and capacity of its active device is much lower than those of the whole UPQC. The paper discussed the principle and control method of this UPQC.