International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016

Power Quality Enhancement In Distribution

System Using Active Control
Ms. Athira.J.Nair

Dr.Savier.J.S

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Government Engineering College, Barton Hill
Trivandrum, India
Email: athi.athirasays@gmail.com

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Government Engineering College, Barton Hill
Trivandrum, India
Email:savier_js@yahoo.com

Abstract With ever increasing cost of energy and

environmental issues with conventional energy, renewable energy
is becoming increasingly popular. The integration of various
renewable energy sources such as wind, photovoltaic, etc. to the
grid solved many problems and replenished the ascending need
for electrical energy. But the integration increases the complexity
of the system and poses various challenges like stability issues
and power quality issues. Power quality problems in industrial
applications concern a wide range of disturbances, such as
voltage sags and swells, flicker, interruptions, harmonic
distortion. The control of industrial loads is based on
semiconductor devices which makes the load to be more sensitive
against power system disturbance. Preventing such phenomena is
particularly important because of the increasing heavy
automation in almost all the industrial processes. In this paper,
enhancement of power quality in distribution system using active
control is proposed. Studies are conducted to reduce the effects
voltage sag and harmonic distortion in distribution system. To
solve these problems a combination of Dynamic Voltage Restorer
(DVR) and Static Compensator (STATCOM) is proposed and
studied. The effectiveness of the devices depends mostly on the
control strategy adopted. In order to improve the response to fast
varying power quality problems, a fuzzy logic controller (FLC)
based control strategy is proposed. The proposed control strategy
is investigated through computer simulation by using MATLAB/
SIMULINK software.
Keywordspower quality, active filters, Dynamic Voltage
Restorer (DVR) , Static Compensator (STATCOM)

I.

INTRODUCTION

The conventional power plants feeding on fossil fuels have

devastating impacts on our environment. Several studies were
conducted to reduce the dependence of human race on the
fossil fuel based power without compromising on the quality
and pace of development. The most viable answer is the use of
alternate means of energy production using renewable energy
sources (RES) of energy like sun, wind, wave etc.[1].
Distributed generation (DG) technology, also known as
dispersed generation technology, refers to the electricity
generating plant connected to a distribution grid rather than
the transmission network. There are many types and sizes of
DG facilities including wind farms, solar photovoltaic (PV)
systems etc. The DG concept emerged as a way to integrate

different power plants, to reduce the burden on the existing

utility, to encourage the establishment of small scale power
generating system using RES at the consumer end, to increase
reliability of distribution system etc [2]. DG technologies can
also substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions thereby
improving the air quality [1].
By the year 2015, about 1849 GW of RES has been
installed around the world of which 30% of the total
production was contributed by wind energy [3]. It is so far the
most attractive RES after solar energy. By interconnecting
wind based DG units to the already existing utility grid the
increasing demand of electricity can be met without
excessively burdening the utility grid. But the integration
increases the complexity of the system and poses various
challenges like stability issues and power quality issues. The
issue of power quality is particularly significant to wind
generating system due to the uncontrollable and unpredictable
nature of the wind resource.
The degree of deviation from the normal sinusoidal voltage
and current waveforms in power system network determines
the quality of the power transmitted on the grid. A wide range
of disturbances such as voltage sags/swells, flicker, harmonic
distortion, impulse transients, and interruptions etc are
collectively termed as power quality problems. Power quality
is an issue that is increasingly gaining prominence in today's
scenario. The issue is important to electricity consumers at all
levels including domestic, commercial and heavy duty
industrial customers. One of the major reasons is the increased
use of sensitive power electronic based devices like personal
computers, microprocessor based controllers etc. They are
inherently sensitive to the variations in voltages which will
adversely affect their service and life. The use of these
equipments requires power supplies with very high quality.
In this paper, the two major power quality issues which
arise due to the integration of a wind farm to the utility grid
are discussed voltage sag and harmonic distortion.
Mitigation of these power quality issues using active
controlled filters is presented in this paper.
Voltage sag, which is a momentary decrease in rms voltage
magnitude is considered as the most serious problem of power
quality. It is often caused by faults in power systems or by
starting of large induction motors. It is also caused by the

International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016
interconnection of wind turbine to the utility grid. It occurs
b) Voltage sag: Voltage sags can occur at any instant of
more frequently than any other power quality phenomenon.
time, with amplitudes ranging from 0.9 pu to 0.1 pu
Any brief disturbance in the form of voltage sag may lead to
and a duration lasting for half a cycle to one minute.
the malfunctioning or halting of a continuous process. The
c) Voltage swell: Voltage swell is defined as an increase
loss for the customer due to the problem of voltage sag at the
in rms voltage or current at the power frequency for
load end can be very high. The most effective way to mitigate
durations from 0.5 cycles to 1 min.
the problem of voltage sag is to use a Dynamic Voltage
d) Voltage 'spikes', 'impulses' or 'surges': These are
Restorer (DVR). It is custom power device which is connected
terms used to describe abrupt, very brief increases in
in series with the critical load to be protected. It usually
voltage value.
consists of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), voltage
e) Voltage transients: They are temporary, undesirable
source inverter, a control circuit, a filter and an injection
voltages that appear on the power supply line.
transformer.
Transients are high over-voltage disturbances (up to
The intensive use of power electronic control in all
20kV) that last for a very short time.
branches of industry as well as general consumers of electric
f) Harmonics: The fundamental frequency of the AC
energy led to the increase in non linear load in the system. As
electric power distribution system is 50Hz. A
a result, the utility supplying these loads has to provide large
harmonic frequency is any sinusoidal frequency,
reactive volt-amperes. Also, the utility gets polluted by
which is a multiple of the fundamental frequency.
harmonics generated by the load. This compelled the utilities
Harmonic frequencies can be even or odd multiples
to levy to extra tariff against excessive var and stricter
of the sinusoidal fundamental frequency.
harmonic standards. One of the more common ways to tackle
g) Flickers: Visual irritation and introduction of many
the problem of harmonic distortion caused by non linear loads
harmonic components in the supply power and their
is to use a Static Compensator (STATCOM). A STATCOM is
associated ill effects.
a shunt connected compensator. It has a Battery Energy
Storage System (BESS), voltage source inverter and a control
C. Consequences
circuit.
The nonlinear load causes loss of purity of the supply
The effectiveness of both DVR and STATCOM depends
waveform and as a result smooth sinusoidal waveform
on the efficiency of control circuit. In this paper, a fuzzy logic
becomes a distorted one. This ends up producing power
controller (FLC) based control strategy is proposed for both
quality problems. For some sensitive devices, a momentary
the filters. The proposed control strategy is investigated
disturbance can cause scrambled data, interrupted
through computer simulation by using MATLAB/ SIMULINK
communications, a frozen mouse, tripping of contractors,
software.
tripping of protection devices, stoppage of programmable
logic control system, system crashes, equipment failure etc. A
II. POWER QUALITY STANDARDS, ISSUES,
power voltage spike can damage valuable components. Any
CONSEQUENCES AND SOLUTIONS
brief disturbance in the form of voltage sag may lead to the
malfunctioning or interruption of a continuous process. This
ultimately results in huge economical loss.
A. International Electro
Technical
Commission
Guidelines
D. Solutions
The guidelines are provided for measurement of power
There are two general approaches to mitigate power quality
quality of wind turbine. IEC standard 61400-21, describes the
problems. The problem of power quality can be dealt either
procedure for determining the power quality characteristics of
from the customer side or in utility side. First approach is
the wind turbine [4]. The standard norms are specied.
called load conditioning, which ensures that the equipment is
1) IEC 61400-21: Wind turbine generating system, part-21.
less sensitive to power disturbances, allowing the operation
Measurement and Assessment of power quality characteristic
under significant voltage distortion. The other approach is to
of grid connected wind turbine
called line conditioning systems. Both schemes are
2) IEC 61400-13: Wind Turbinemeasuring procedure in
implemented with voltage source PWM inverters, with a dc
determining the power behavior.
bus having a reactive element such as a capacitor.
3) IEC 61400-12: Wind Turbine performance.
Depending on the needs of the customer the most suitable
The data sheet with electrical characteristic of wind turbine
devices can be selected from them. For dealing with the
provides the base for the utility assessment regarding a grid
problem of compensation for voltage sag the suitable devices
connection.
are narrowed down to three and their characteristics are
compared [5]. They are
B. Various Power Quality Issues
A wide range of disturbances such as voltage sags/swells,
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): This could be a static
harmonic distortion, impulse transients, flicker, interruptions,
converter with double conversion to mitigate most type of
etc are collectively termed as power quality problems.
power quality disturbances.
a) Voltage dip: A voltage dip is used to refer to shortterm reduction in voltage of less than half a second.

International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016
Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR): It is a series-connected
Filtering is provided by the DVR and STATCOM. DVR
device, which corrects the voltage dip and restore the load
cancels the effect of voltage sag by injecting a voltage into the
voltage in case of a voltage dip.
system, and STATCOM removes the harmonics by injecting a
Solid State Transfer Switch (SSTS): It facilitates the change
current into the system.
from a faulty feeder to a healthy feeder.
After the economic comparison of the three solutions
considering the expected savings, cost of solution per kVA,
annual operating cost, total annual cost and a benet/cost ratio,
the SSTS is found to have the highest benet/cost ratio. But it
requires the presence of a secondary independent feeder.
Otherwise the DVR is considered to be the most cost eective
solution [5].
The traditional methods for harmonic compensation
included fixed or switched capacitor and a phase controlled
reactor coupled with a passive filter. They are being replaced
with more sophisticated converter based custom power
devices such as SVCs and STATCOMs. They can provide
reactive power compensation, voltage compensation, power
factor correction and harmonic elimination thereby improving
power quality of the network. STATCOM is faster, smaller
and have better performance under low voltage conditions.
When the primary aim of a STATCOM is to compensate for
the current harmonics in utility grid, it is also called an Active
Fig 1. System under study
Power Filter (APF)[7]
III. WIND INTEGRATED DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
Integration of a wind farm to a distribution system faces
many challenges especially in the case of a weak grid. The
variability and the diffuse nature of the wind power is
challenging to the operation of a grid. Wind turbines tend to
create severe problems on weak power systems. As a result of
wind variation, weak grids with high wind penetration may
experience significant voltage swings. A traditional switched
capacitor cannot follow the swings caused by wind farm since
they are designed to correct slowly changing voltages that
occur naturally as load cycles over 24 hours.[6]
Another problem of WGS is the electrical generator
technology. Traditional power plants (fossil fuel, hydro and
nuclear) use synchronous generators which rotate in
synchronism with grid frequency meaning at fixed rpm. Wind
turbines on the other hand use variable speed generation
technologies to increase energy capture at different wind
speeds induction generators. They consume large amount of
reactive power for their operation which is supplied by the
grid which results in lowering of local grid voltage. This in
turn affects the security and voltage stability of the
system[6],[9].
A. System under Study
The system of study is shown in Fig. 1. Consider a 415V,
50 Hz distribution system. A wind distributed generating
system is connected to the grid at the point of common
coupling (PCC). Both critical load and non linear loads are
connected to the system at the PCC. The Active Power

IV.

STATIC COMPENSATOR (STATCOM)

It consists of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)

connected to a DC link capacitor and a three-phase voltage
source inverter (VSI). It is connected in shunt at the interface
of the induction generator and non-linear load at the PCC.
Fig.2 represents a typical STATCOM. The STATCOM output
is varied according to the control strategy, so that it injects a
compensating current of variable magnitude and frequency
component at the bus of common coupling to maintain the
power quality. The current control strategies adopted in this
paper are the PI based Hysteresis Control (Bang-Bang control)
and Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) based Hysteresis Control.

Fig 2. STATCOM

International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016
V. DYNAMIC VOLTAGE RESTORER
A typical DVR structure is shown in Fig. 3. It consists of
a BESS, a three phase voltage inverter and an injection
transformer. It is connected in series with the 3 phase sensitive
load. The DVR protects critical or sensitive loads by
mitigating the effects of voltage sags or swells on the
distribution feeder due to interconnection of WGS or faults in
the system by injecting a voltage to the system. This maintains
the load voltage [8]. Even though the DVR is commercially
available today, several areas regarding the design and control
of this type of device is at the research level. The control
strategies adopted in this paper are the PI based SVPWM
(State Vector Pulse Width Modulation) control and fuzzy
logic controller based SVPWM (State Vector Pulse Width
Modulation) control.

Fig. 5. Control scheme for STATCOM

Fig. 6. Control scheme for DVR

I.

Fig.3. Dynamic Voltage Restorer

VI.

CONTROL SCHEME

In this paper behaviour of DVR and STATCOM using

two different controllers are analysed and results are
compared. The two controllers employed are ProportionalIntegral (PI) Controller and Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC).
Fig 4 gives the basic difference between PI and FLC. They are
used to control the firing angle for the switches of the VSC in
DVR and STATCOM. They are shown in Figures 5 and 6
respectively.

PI Controller
The PI Controller input is an error signal obtained by
subtracting the rms value of the actual terminal voltage from
the reference voltage. This error signal is then processed by
the PI Controller and the output is given to the PWM signal
generator. The PWM signal generator then generates the pulse
signal to the IGBT gates of the Voltage Source Converter
(VSC). The disadvantage of PI controller is its inability to
react to the abrupt changes in the error signal because it is
only capable of determining the instantaneous value of the
error signal without considering the change of the rise and fall
of the error, ie, the derivative of the error signal.
II.
Fuzzy Logic Controller
To overcome the disadvantage of the PI Controller, a
Fuzzy Logic Controller is proposed. The Fuzzy Logic
Controller used in this paper is based on the Mamdanis
system. The robust nature of FLC allows it to react better to
abrupt changes in error signal. The FLC is given two inputs an error signal obtained by subtracting the rms value of the
actual terminal voltage from the reference voltage(e) and the
derivative of the error signal(e). The determination of the
output control signal is done in an interference engine based

Fig 4. (a) PI and (b) FL Controllers

on a rule base having if- then rules IF e AND e, THEN

control signal C.
In a fuzzy logic controller, the control action is
determined from the evaluation of a set of simple linguistic
rules. The development of the rules requires a thorough

International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016
understanding of the process to be controlled, but it does not
waveform. This is rectified by STATCOM. Fig 11 (a) and (b)
require a mathematical model of the system. The rule base
shows the effects of PI and FLC based STATCOM and Fig
developed is reliable since it is complete and generated
12(a) and (b) shows the THD values.
sophistically without using extrapolation.

Fig.7. Fuzzy control block diagram

VII.

SIMULATION AND RESULTS

A. DVR Operation
Consider a 415V, 50Hz three phase distribution system to
which a WGS is connected. When a wind turbine isinitially
connected to the grid, it requires certain amount of reactive
power for the induction generator to start producing power.
This is supplied by the utility which causes a voltage drop at
PCC. The DVR compensates for the sag thereby protecting the
critical load. Fig. 8(a) and (b) shows PI based DVR and FLC
based DVR operation respectively. The results of the THD
analysis are shown in Fig. 9

Fig.9. THD values (a) PI DVR (b) FLC DVR

(a)

(b)

(a)

(b)

Fig.10. Dynamic response (a) Response of PI based DVR (b) Response of

FLC based DVR

(a)

Fig.8 (a) PI based DVR (b) FLC based DVR

The dynamic response of the DVR is shown in Fig. 10(a) and

(b). The PI base DVR has a considerable delay in responding
to the sag while the FLC DVR starts compensation instantly.
B. STATCOM Operation
The source current on the grid is affected by the nonlinear
load and wind generator causing a loss of purity of the

(b)
Fig.11. harmonic reduction by (a) PI STATCOM (b) FLC STATCOM

International Conference on Information Systems, Energy, Environment and Safety- Emerging Scenarios ISEES2016
devices is also much lesser compared to PI controller based
devices.
REFERENCES

Fig.11. THD values (a) PI STATCOM (b) FLC STATCOM

Tables I and II gives the comparison between the two

controllers for DVR and STATCOM respectively
Table I: Comparison between PI and FLC DVR

Parameter
Sag compensation
THD value

Dynamic response

PI based DVR
compensated
Exceeds
permissible
limit(>5%)
Slow

FLC based DVR

compensated
Within permissible
limit(<5%)
faster

Table II: Comparison between PI and FLC STATCOM

Parameter
Harmonic
compensation
THD value

Odd harmonics

PI based
STATCOM
compensated

PI based
STATCOM
compensated

Exceeds
permissible limit
(>5%)
present

Within permissible
limit(<5%)

VIII.

eliminated

CONCLUSION

The paper presents a Fuzzy Logic Controller for power

quality enhancement in distribution systems connected to wind
generating system with both critical and non linear loads.
The custom power devices chosen power quality
enhancement are DVR and STATCOM. The active control
operation of the DVR and STATCOM is simulated using two
control schemes: PI based control scheme and FLC based
control scheme. DVR injects a voltage into the grid to
compensate for the sag in load voltage and STATCOM injects
current to the grid to cancel out the harmonics in source
current.
The simulation result shows that the performance of FLC
based devices is superior to that of PI based ones. FLC based
devices compensates better and faster. The THD value of FLC

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