Towards technical and economic feasibility of power quality compensators

Abstract

In industrial grids, equipment lifetime is reduced, and power losses are increased due to typical issues caused by low power quality indices, such as insulation failure, overheating, mechanical oscillation, audible noise, high currents in the neutral conductor, harmonic resonance, and malfunctioning of power electronics converters and protections. These drawbacks can be mitigated by adopting power quality enhancement technologies known as compensators, such as passive power filters, static reactive compensators, and active power filters. However, the most appropriate compensation system must assure power quality indices within limits established by standards, which characterize its technical feasibility and is economically feasible. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to perform a feasibility analysis of power quality improvement projects considering both technical and economic aspects. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified by different case studies assessing real industrial operating conditions. The results show that the proposed methodology is robust and can select the best compensation solution under different grid conditions.