POWER QUALTIY ISSUES WITH GRID

CONNECTED RENENWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

 CONTENT

▶ Basic requirement of load

▶ Power quality
▶ Causes of power quality disturbances
▶ Need of power quality
▶ Mitigation methods
Basic Requirements of Critical Load

Is

Vs Load

• Continuous, No Break in Power

• Voltage Regulation
• Sine wave Supply
•Constant Frequency
 POWER QUALITY

Electric power quality (EPQ), or simply Power quality, refers to

"maintaining the near sinusoidal waveform of power distribution bus voltages and
currents at rated magnitude and frequency. Tolerance
• OR

Power quality is often defined as the electrical network's or the grid's

ability to supply a clean and stable power supply. In other words, power
quality ideally creates a perfect power supply that is always available, has a pure
noise-free sinusoidal wave shape, and is always within voltage and frequency
 Common PQ Disturbances

● Harmonic Distortion
● Voltage sags and swells
● Under voltages and over voltages
● Voltage Unbalance
● Voltage Flicker
● Voltage surges or spikes
● Voltage Interruption
● Transient Disturbances
● Non zero low-frequency impedance
● No zero high- frequency impedance
Harmonics

▶ Harmonics is the distortion to the normal electrical current or voltage waveform

normally supplied by non linear load
▶ There are two kinds of harmonics - 1) Current harmonic
2) Voltage harmonic

▶ Current harmonics are produced due to non linear load connected in supply
E,g when a rectifier is connected in supply system it draws current which is not
necessarily the sinusoidal current waveform thus the current waveform becomes quite
complex
▶ Voltage harmonics are produced due to current harmonics . The voltage provided by
voltage source is distorted by current harmonics due to source impedence, if the
source impedence of voltage source is small there will be less distortion in voltage
waveform,
▶ There are several types of harmonics:- 1)Third order harmonics
2)Fifth order harmonics
3) Sevent order harmoncs

Causes:-
▶ Due to non linear load such as VFD’S, UPS system, photo copy
machine, laser printers, lighting with electronic ballast.
▶ Arcing device
▶ Magnetic circuit
Voltage swell and sag
▶ Voltage swell:-
When RMS voltage exceeds nominal voltage by 10% to 80% for
0.5 cycle or 1 minute the event is called as voltage swell

▶ Voltage sag:-
When RMS voltage is below the nominal voltage by 10% to 90% for 0.5
cycle or 1 minute then the event is called as voltage sag.
It is exactly opposite to the swell.

Cause of voltage sag and swell

sag:- cycling ON of large load
swell :- cycling OFF of large load
Under voltage and Overvoltage

▶ Under voltage :-
It occurs when nominal voltage drops below 90% for more than
1 minute

▶ Overvoltage:-
it occurs when nominal voltage rises above 110% for more than 1
1minute.

causes
Utility system faults • Downed power lines • Protective relaying operating due to
faults
Voltage unbalance

▶ In a balanced sinusoidal supply system the three line-neutral voltages are

equal in magnitude and are phase displaced from each other by 120 degrees
▶ But due to some causes voltage get unbalanced these creats problem

▶ Va voltage balance Va voltage unbalance

1200 1200 1200 1190

1200 1210 Vb
Vc Vb Vc
Causes of voltage unbalance

●Unequal system impedances

● Unequal distribution of
• single-phase loads
• Phase to Phase loads
• Unbalanced Three phase loads
 Voltage flicker
▶ Random and repetitive variations in the RMS voltage between 90% to 110% of
nominal voltage can produce a phenomenon called as voltage flicker in
lightning equipments
▶ It can be also explained as repetitive or random variations of the vat frequencies
less than 25 Hz, which the human eye can detect as a variation in the lamp intensity
of a standard bulb due to sudden changes in the real and reactive Power drawn by a
load
▶ Flicker is rapid visible changes of light level

voltage waveform showing flicker

Voltage surge/spike

▶ It is defined as abrupt or very brief increase in the voltage called spikes or

surge

▶ It is caused due to large inductive load being turn off, or more severely by
lightning
Transient disturbances

▶ Transient disturbances are caused by the injection of energy by switching or by

lightning
Causes
● Lightning
● Capacitor Switching
● Load switching

Oscillatory transient waveform caused by capacitor energizing

Non zero low & high frequency
impedance
▶ Non zero low frequency impedance:-
It is defined as the condition when load
draws more power the voltage gets drop is called as non zero low frequency
impedance.

▶ Non zero high frequency impedance:-

It is defined as the condition when load
demands large amount power, then stops demanding it, there will be dip or
spike in the voltage due to inductances in the power supply line . These is
known as non zero high frequency impedances.
Need of power quality
Business Problems:

• Momentary disturbance can cause scrambled data, interrupted

communications, system crashes and equipment failure

• Lost productivity and idle people and equipment

• Overtime required to make up for lost work time

• Revenue and accounting problems such as invoices not

prepared, payments held up etc

According to Electric Light and Power Magazine, 30 to 40 percent

of all business downtime is related to Power Quality Problems
 PQ Mitigation

Reactive and Harmonic Demand

✓ Active Filter
✓ Passive Filter
✓Harmonic Filter

Voltage sag and Swell

✓ Dynamic Voltage Restorer

✓ Tap changing transformer
 PQ Mitigation

Voltage Unbalance
✓ Static Power balancer
✓ Redistribution of single-phase loads equally
to all phases (Utility level).
✓ Load Balancing (Plant level)

Voltage Flicker
✓ Distribution static VAR compensator
 PQ Mitigation

Transient Disturbances
✓ Surge Arrester
✓ Isolation transformer
✓ Active/Passive Filter