A Novel Control of Harmonic Filters to Improve the Power System Network

Distortion of voltages and currents can affect the power system adversely causing power quality problems. Therefore, estimation of harmonics is of high importance for efficiency of the power system network. Non-linear devices such as power electronics converters can inject harmonics alternating currents (AC) in the electrical power system. The number of sensitive loads that require ideal sinusoidal supply voltage for their proper operation has been increasing. To maintain the quality limits proposed by standards to protect the sensitive loads, it is necessary to include some form of filtering device to the power system. Harmonics also increases overall reactive power demanded by equivalent load. Filters have been devised to achieve an optimal control strategy for harmonic problems. To achieve an acceptable distortion, increase the power quality and to reduce the harmonics hence several three phase filter banks are used and connected in parallel. In this project, high order harmonics have been suppressed by employing variants of Butterworth, Chebyshev and Cauer filters. MATLAB/SIMULINK is used to generate and analyze the different harmonics magnitude and frequency. Investigated three-phase harmonics filters are shunt elements that are used in power systems for decreasing voltage distortion and for correcting the power factor.