Active Control for Power Quality Improvement in

Hybrid Power Systems

1
Walid Frangieh, Student, 2Maged B. Najjar, IEEE member
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Balamand
North Tripoli, Lebanon
1
walid.frangieh@gmail.com
2
maged.najjar@balamand.edu.lb

AbstractRenewable energy has made a stunning entrance to
the market. In Lebanon there are some projects taking place
such as Hawa Akkar and Beirut River Solar Snake (BRSS). They
are used to reduce the reliance on hydrocarbons (petrol-based)
generation. The integration of these systems (wind energy, hydro
energy, solar power etc.) created different kinds of problems in
the grid. Whether system stability problems or Power Quality
issues, these issues need solving. Classically passive filters were
used but nowadays active filters such as Static Synchronous
Compensator (STATCOM) and Dynamic Voltage Restorer
(DVR) are chosen for the task. STATCOM is a device that
regulates the voltage level or the reactive power in the system. It
is used to maintain voltage stability, enlargement of critical
clearing time. DVR is a voltage restorer that can solve the voltage
power quality issues. This paper will integrate the STATCOM
and the DVR for voltage control and harmonics filtering. The
simulation has been done by MATLAB/SIMULINK and shows
the work of the STATCOM and the DVR combined.
KeywordsWind Turbine, STATCOM, Active Filters, DVR,
Harmonics, Power Quality
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last couple of decades, the creation, implementation
and perfection of renewable energy has occurred. It has
progressed through time with increasing reliability. The
integration of renewable energy such as wind, photovoltaic,
fuel cell, and tidal to the grid solved many problems and
replenished the exceeding and ascending need for electrical
energy but created plenty more. In Europe 2012 renewable
energies covered 14% of gross final energy consumption
compared to 12.9% in 2011. The European Union has over a
100-GW of renewable energy installed capacity at the end of
2012 [1]. In Lebanon the renewable energy sector is being
created and trying to enlarge. The Lebanese government plan
to install 200 MW of solar farms by 2020. The Beirut River
Solar Snake (BRSS) projects goal to install 10 MW of
photovoltaic farms along the Beirut River [2]. Hawa Akkar is
another project installed in Akkar Lebanon. This wind farm
will generate 60 MW which is enough power to supply 60,000
households a year and its aim is to reduce the rationing periods
in Lebanon [3], [4]. This leads to a more complex electrical
network or Grid. This enlargement and enrichment in
equipment has caused problems such as stability, reliability and
power quality [5], [6], [7] and [8]. The issue of power quality is
of great importance to the wind turbine [6]. Theres a need to
find solutions to these problems, using different technologies
such as smart meters, monitoring system, controllers, remote
ability. The integration of wind energy into a weak system is a
challenge; voltage fluctuation, voltage dips, swells and swags
are created due to the uncontrollable resource and the nature of
the DWIG (Distributed Wind Induction Generators) on the
already weak system. This causes stability issues, reliability
and power quality issues which need to be solved [9].
A. Power Quality
1) International Electro Technical Commission Guidelines
The International Electro-technical Commission (IEC)
gives the procedures for determining the power quality
characteristics when a wind turbine is involved [10].
2) Voltage Variation
Wind speed and induction generator torque are the main
cause of voltage variations. These voltage variations are
directly related to real and reactive power variations. Voltage
Sag/Dips/Swell, Short Interruptions and Long duration voltage
variation are common voltage variation issues. The amplitude
of voltage fluctuation depends on grid strength, network
impedance, phase-angle and power factor of the wind turbines
[5].
3) Harmonics
Harmonics are created due to power electronic switching
devices in the system. The harmonic content in a voltage or
current should be under the limit at the Point of Common
Coupling (PCC). The IEC-61400-21 establishes a guideline to
base the study of harmonics on [10]. The filtering by rapid
switching largely reduces the lower order harmonic current, but
the remaining current will have higher order frequency content
which can be easily filtered-out.
4) Consequences of the Issues
The power quality issues damage equipment such as
Microprocessors, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs),
Variable Speed Drives (VSDs) and delicate control systems. It
may cause the tripping of Contactors and protection devices. It
can lead to stopping sensitive equipment such as PCs, and
even stop the process of plants.

ISBN: 978-1-4799-5680-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE 218

B. Wind Turbine Induction Generator
The wind turbine needs a relatively large amount of
reactive power to operate. This power must be fed externally
whether from a capacitor bank, or a controlled inverter, or from
the electrical synchronous grid. The reactive power absorbed
by the WTIG causes the voltage on the bus where the generator
is connected to drop, and the system build up will raise the
voltage again to the nominal voltage of the grid [6].
C. Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM)
1) STATCOM Model
The STATCOM has been reported to improve the power
quality in power systems with DG integration of wind type just
as in [5], [8] and [11]. STATCOM can be implemented to
regulate the voltage as a shunt compensator for the WTIG. It is
a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) connected to a DC
link capacitor which itself connected to a Voltage Source
Converter (VSC).
The STATCOM is shunt connected and uses in this paper a
Hysteresis current control method to inject a current in the
system to counter the harmonics created by the non-linear load
and the WTIG. The basic STATCOM model is shown in Fig.1.
Fig. 1. Basic STATCOM Model [12]
2) Reference current generation
To get a reference current to use in the STATCOM control
we need a topology for grid coordination. This paper uses these
formulas to synchronize the reference currents to the grid
voltage of the infinite bus, which is a bus with theoretical
voltage of 1 per unit (p.u.) with infinite stability. If we take the
3 phase RMS voltages (Vsa,Vsb,Vsc) and is expressed, as
sample template Vsm, sampled peak voltage, as in (1).
(1)
Then the unit vectors are generated from the sourceare
shown in (2).
(2)
ISBN: 978-1-4799-5680-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE
Then the reference currents will be as in (3):
(3)
This creates a fixed sinusoidal reference current
synchronized with the grid without using a Phase Locked Loop
(PLL). This method is simple, robust and favorable as
compared with other methods [13].
3) Hysteresis (also called Bang-Bang)
The actual currents are detected subtracted from the
reference current and obtain current error. This error is
compared by a relay that gives an ON OFF signal for the IGBT
switching if the error is higher or lower than a previously set
band.
Fig. 2. Generation of switching signals [8]
For phase A we have the following switching logic:
if Isa - Isa <hb , then we need to inject a current
and Sa =1
if Isa - Isa >hb , then we need to absorb current
then Sa=0.
Phase B and phase C work in the same way; hb is the
hysteresis band. The wider the hysteresis band is the larger the
error, the smaller the hysteresis band the smaller the error but
this means the need for very fast switching and higher rating
devices [7].
Because the hysteresis current controller takes
measurements of the current signal and compares it to a
reference sinusoidal signal coming from the voltage of the grid,
it is blind to the load changes and thinks that the load increase
is a Power Quality fault. The STATCOM works to correct that
work and in return injects higher current to render the current at
a 1 p.u. reference. This means that the STATCOM is supplying
the load increase instead of the grid. To solve this issue a load
tracking technique is required.
When a load is increased the complex power magnitude is
increased. Taking that magnitude of the complex power ad
dividing it by a base power we per unitize it. This gives us a
factor to multiply the reference current as in (4).
(4)
That method makes the STATCOM correct the Power
quality issue alone without supplying any real power to the
load.
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D. Dynamic Voltage Regulator (DVR)
1) DVR Model
The DVR is used to protect critical or sensitive loads by
mitigating the effects of voltage sags or swells on the
distribution feeder due to faults in the system by maintaining
constant voltage magnitude. It is basically a BESS connected to
an inverter which itself is connected to an injection transformer
that is mounted in series with the 3 phase sensitive load.

Fig. 4. Control of SVPWM switching pulses [16]

II. SYSTEM IN STUDY

A. Proposed system in study

The system of study is shown in Fig. 5:

Fig. 3. Basic DVR topology [14]

The DVR can compensate voltage sags by injecting

reactive power or real and reactive power. This depends on the
depth and width of the sag or swell.
2) DVR control
As for the control of the DVR many techniques exist to
control the voltage injection, the chosen one is the Space
Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) which is proven
very effective and gives a better result than conventional PWM
in terms of THD and power quality.
The reference phasor consists of: phase, frequency and
magnitude components. All will vary to some point during
normal network operation [15].
The block diagram of the control system used is shown in
Fig. 4. The control system of a DVR plays an important role,
with the requirements of fast response in the face of voltage
sags and variations in the connected load. This paper uses an
open loop control for the DVR system using PLL. The PLL is
to synchronize the DVR with the power system by generating a Fig. 5. Proposed system in study
reference voltage to be compared with the actual one.
We have to study our system at the PCC, which is the
To do so the control system takes the abc components of interest of this kind of research. Studying at the PCC will give
the load voltage transforms them into the synchronous an idea of the system behavior at any other Bus. Fig. 5 shows
reference frame dq0 and compares it to the reference voltage the grid or the infinite bus connected to the PCC, it shows the
Vref of the system. With Vdref relative to the system and Vqref WTIG, a non-linear load for harmonics generation. The DVR
is equal to 0. They are passed by a PI controller and then the and STATCOM are used for Active filtering. They cancel the
reference voltage injected is generated. This voltage is input to effect of voltage sags and swells by injecting a voltage into the
the SVPWM. system, and remove the harmonics by injecting a current into
The SVPWM method is an advanced PWM method and the system.
possibly the best among all the PWM techniques. The output Fig. 6 will show the system model in
voltages of the inverter are composed by eight switch states. MATLAB/SIMULINK.

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Fig. 6. MATLAB/SIMULINK modeled system
In Fig. 7 the system is shown in details. Fig. 7a shows the
STATCOM composed from a rectifier a DC link and an
inverter. The STATCOM control is shown and the hysteresis
current controller is present. Fig. 7b shows the DVR composed
from two DC batteries with an inverter connected to an
injection transformer and with the relative control.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 7. MATLAB/SIMULINK model of (a) STATCOM, (b)DVR
ISBN: 978-1-4799-5680-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE
III. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
A. System operation
1) DVR operation
When a wind turbine is initially connected to the grid, it
needs reactive power for the induction generator to start
producing electric power. This causes the voltage to drop at the
PCC. At this instant the DVR should start its operation and
compensate for the voltage drop at the critical load. Fig. 8a
shows the voltage drop at the PCC; Fig. 8b shows the voltage
on the critical load and it shows the DVR compensation. Fig.
8c shows the injected voltage by the DVR at the coupling
transformer.
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 8. a) Voltage drop at PCC when wind turbine is starting, b) Voltage at
Critical load Bus (with DVR compensation), c) Injected voltage by DVR
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 2) STATCOM operation
After the wind turbine is initialized and running and after
the Non-Linear load is connected to the system, the voltage and
current at the PCC will be distorted and need to be filtered.
Here the STATCOM (Active filter) is activated and will inject
the exact current into the system needed to cancel the effect of
the harmonics. This reference injected current is generated by
the hysteresis control technique. Fig. 9 shows the current at the
PCC with STATCOM being OFF. Fig. 10 shows the current
after turning ON the STATCOM, it is shown in the plot that
the current follows a perfect sine wave with small jumps in the
current related to the fast switching and hysteresis band. Fig.
11 shows the injected current from the STATCOM which is
highly distorted current that cancels the effect of the harmonics
present at the PCC.
Fig. 13. Current THD after STATCOM

The STATCOM injects the current that has the needed

Fig. 9. Current at PCC before STATCOM
content to mitigate the power quality issues, the Fourier
analysis in Fig. 12 and 13 shows that the current THD has
dropped from an unacceptable 8.84% to an acceptable 4.05%.
In Fig. 14 shows an 80% load increases the PCC current
and the injected current without STATCOM load tracking
technique.

Fig. 10. Current at PCC after STATCOM

Fig. 11. Injected current by STATCOM

Fig. 14. PCC characteristics without Load Tracking a) Load power, b)PCC
current, c) Injected current

In Fig. 15 shows an 80% load increases the PCC current

and the injected current with STATCOM load tracking
technique.

Fig. 12. Current THD before STATCOM

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Fig. 15. PCC characteristics with Load Tracking a) Load power, b)PCC
current, c) Injected current with Load tracking
Without load tracking the PCC current remains the same
and the current required for the load is supplied from the
STATCOM (injected). With load tracking the PCC current is
increased but remain filtered, which means that the source is
supplying the load increase and the STATCOM is only
filtering the signal.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper examined the STATCOM hysteresis control
technique for harmonic cancelation with load tracking in a
system where a wind turbine is present and it examined the
work of the SVPWM operated DVR when connected to a
critical load from the same system. It used a separate control
for the STATCOM and the DVR interchanging their roles. This
gives room to the subject of combining the two without having
overlapping problems. This paper used as non-linear loads
simple AC to DC rectifiers, another subject to be examined in
the future is changing the non-linear load type.
ISBN: 978-1-4799-5680-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE
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