A Novel Dynamic Var Compensator

Chengxin Dai, Zhongdong Yin, Renzhong Shan

Key Laboratory of Power System Protection and Dynamic Monitoring and Control under Ministry of Education
University(North China Electric Power University),
Beijing , China.
dcx716@126.com

AbstractThis paper proposed a novel dynamic reactive
power compensation circuit topology which is applicable to
low voltage distribution system. It described the composition,
features, and working principle of dynamic reactive power
compensation system. Open-loop SPWM control strategy is
applied for the inverter, by adjusting the inverter output
voltage to dynamically regulate the absorption or emission of
reactive power by SVC, zero reactive power compensation of
the system can be achieved. With the combination of fixed
compensation capacitor the capacity of the inverter can be
smaller when it compensates the reactive power dynamically,
it can improve the power factor and voltage level fast,
efficiently and reliably. It overcomes the switching oscillation
and the shortcomings of inadequate compensation, at the
same time, reduce power loss and improve the voltage
quality.
Keywords- reactive compensationfixed capacitor; Power
factorInverter
I. INTRODUCTION
Dynamic reactive power compensation is an economic
and effective measure to improve voltage stability, which
is also the requirement to improve power security and the
strategic defense demand. At current, dynamic reactive
power compensation devices have been widely used in the
transmission system for the wave impedance compensation
and long-distance sectional compensation[1], it has also
been used to compensate a large number of reactive power
for the load. The main use of dynamic reactive power
compensation in the transmission system are:
a) Control the reactive power flow and improve the
capacity of transmission lines;
b) Regulate voltage system and improve power
quality;
c) Provide reactive power for the converter;
d) Improve power factor and reduce reactive power
flow in order to reduce the network loss;
e) Improve the static and transient stability and
limit operation overvoltage;
f) reinforce the damping of low frequency
oscillation and inhibit the subsynchronous oscillation.
For the thyristor switched capacitor (TSC) or on-off
switch capacitor on the current, its characteristics of simple
structure and more are widely used, but their life become
lower because of its continuous regulation of the output
and the impact of switching speed and frequency of the
capacitor, the power compensation structure now
commonly used is fixed capacitor FC adding the
Controllable reactor TCR, capacitors provide full load
reactive power to achieve the purpose of dynamic reactive
power compensation through regulating reactive power
dynamic and continuously by the TCR, but the thyristor
phase controlled triggering manner used by the reactor
could bring a great number of low harmonic current, which
needs an additional filter to absorb the low harmonic
current, and it gives a certain impact to the system
reliability[5-7]. There are also a few documents on reactor
in series with the inverter output for reactive power
compensation Through the adjustment of the inverters
output voltage, this paper proposed a novel main circuit
topology for reactive power compensation, using three-
phase four-leg bridge series inverter output capacitor and
inductor access to low-voltage distributing systems,
regulate the output and absorption of reactive power by
adjusting the inverters output voltage, thereby reactive
power compensation system to achieve the purpose of. The
novel type of compensation circuit presented in this paper
can adjust capacitive reactive power and also inductive
reactive power, which adapt to a wide range of load.
II. PRINCIPLE OF NOVEL REACTIVE POWER
COMPENSATOR
Take a fixed capacitor for example, assuming that the
three-phase capacitor group linked to node, each capacity
of the compensation capacitor is:
2
C C C C
Q =U I =U C 1
U
C
-line voltage of the installation point (V); I
C
-line
current of capacitors (A); C-the capacitance of capacitors
(F).
From the (1) we can see that the compensation capacity
of the capacitor has relation with its own capacitance C
and the voltage U
C
added on it, therefore we can adjust the
capacitor C and the voltage U
C
to change its reactive
power output.
From another point of view, the reactive power is
regulated through the regulation of the capacitor voltage
UC in this paper, circuit structure of reactive power
compensation is given as Figure 1.
A B C
N
2
K
1
K
3
K
C L R
dc
C
1
L

Fig.1 The structure frame of reactive power compensator
Project Supported by National Mega-projects of Science and
Technology for the 11th Five-year Plan (2007BAA12B03)
2009 International Conference on Energy and Environment Technology
978-0-7695-3819-8/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICEET.2009.243
27
S
Q
LOAD
Q
OUT
Q
1
K
2
K
3
K
C L R
R
FC

Fig.2 The System equivalent circuit
SPWM controller get the system reactive power needs
to be compensated by detecting the bus voltage and current
signals and through a certain transformation. The
controller output SPWM pulse control signals to control
the inverter output voltage, thus to change the voltage
between the reactor and capacitor and change the reactive
power capacity issued or absorbed by the device.
Assuming capacitors are used at the beginning, when
the system reactive power keep increasing, the inverters
largest output voltage also keep increasing, and capacitors
output reactive power is zero when the output voltage is
same with the bus phase voltage finally, if the systems
reactive power continue to increase at this time, K1 will
action to switch capacitor, K2 will be closed to input
inductance, thus inductance will absorb reactive power of
the system. Since this conversion happened when the
inverters output voltage is the same with bus voltage,
namely it switches when the voltage between capacitor and
reactor is at about zero, it does not have voltage or current
impact to the system, that is, this compensation device
could output or absorb reactive power smoothly. K3 closed
when the device is put into operation and the system
voltage charge the DC bus capacitors through the current
limiting resistor.
III. ANALYSIS ON CONTROL ALRORITHM
A. Detection method of control signal
Three-phase Instantaneous Reactive Power Theory is
put forward by the Thai Akagi in 1983 firstly, then the
theory be researched and gradually improved. The
detection of reactive power of the theory include p-q
computing method and ip-iq computing method, the use of
p-q computing approach requires signals of two-phase
voltage and three-phase current at the same time, and this
method is impacted by the public connection point voltage
distortion and imbalance ,its detection error is relatively
large.The ip-iq computing method uses the reference sine
and cosine voltage signal to replace the voltage signal in
the p-q computing method, so in the three-phase power
system, the use of ip-iq algorithms only need to detect one
phase voltage signal and three channels current signals.
This method is not impacted by the voltage distortion, it
can detected public connection points load fundamental
positive-sequence active current accurately in order to
obtain control signal of higher accuracy.
The low voltage distributing system is three-phase
four-wire system, while the ip, iq detection method
requires the sum of three-phase current is zero. The
solution is firstly obtained its zero-sequence current and
subtract it from the current of each phase.
32
C C
LPF
LPF
p
i
q
i
23
CC
1 af
i
1 bf
i
1 cf
i
sin t
cos t
'
a
i
'
b
i
'
c
i
p
i
q
i

Figure.3 The current detection of three phase four wire
The principle of the zero-sequence current extraction
modules are as follows: In the three-phase four-wire
system, the zero-sequence current of three-phase load
current
a
i ,
b
i ,
c
i is:
Z a b c
( i ) / 3 i i i = + + 2
'
a a Z
i i i =
'
b b Z
i i i =
'
c c Z
i i i = 3
32
1 1
1
2 2 2
3 3 3
0
2 2
C



=

4
sin cos
cos sin
t t
C
t t



=



5
32
'
'
'
a
p
b
q
c
i
i
C C i
i
i



=





i 6
The sum of three-phase current without zero-sequence
component is zero, then we can carry on detection by the
detection methods used in the three-phase three-wire
system to get the compensation current signal include of
harmonic, fundamental negative sequence and zero-
sequence components finally.
B. Calculation of command voltage
According to the relationship of the system, reactive
power balance between the novel application and the load
is:

S CL FC L
Q Q Q Q + + = 7
S
Q is the reactive power provided by the system,
CL
Q is the reactive power provided by the novel reactive
power compensation applications,
FC
Q is the reactive
power provided by the fixed capacitors,
L
Q is for the
demanded of reactive power by the load, our control goal
is to reach the reactive power provided by system is zero,
the reactive power demanded by the load is completely
28
compensated by the novel application and FC. For
S
Q is
the control quantity, a given value is set to zero, a closed-
loop feedback control system is formed, and finally cause
S
Q to be zero stably, then:
CL FC L
Q Q Q + = 8
Take the system needing capacitive reactive power
compensation for example, after the device put into
operation, the phases of the inverter output voltage
a
e
b
e
c
e are the same with the bus voltage
a
u
b
u
c
u ,
the reactive power compensation to the load generated
mainly by the capacitor. It is:
( )
2
ACL Arms arms
Q u e C = 9
Based on the above expression, we can get the RMS
of the inverter output voltage
rms
e . (Take A phase for
example)
ACL
arms Arms
Q
e u
C
= 10
The control process is:
a) First, According to the amount of reactive power
needed to be compensated, we can get command voltage
signal e
a
combined with equation (10), the control block
diagram is shown as figure 4.gather three-phase reactive
power signals
S
Q
L
Q
FC
Q we can calculate them
as follows
CL FC L
Q Q Q + = 11
b) According to the amount of reactive power
needed to be compensated, we can get command voltage
signal e
a
combined with equation (10), the control block
diagram is shown as figure 4.
0
Arms
u
C
x
k
PLL
A
u

a
e
Q
AS
Q
PI
controller
command
voltage

Fig4. The control frame of command voltage
c) Accordance to the command voltage signal from
above, we can get the trigger pulse signal of IGBT through
SPWM modulation to control output voltage of the
inverter, and eventually realize reactive closed-loop
control of system.
IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL
ANALYSIS
This novel reactive power compensation circuit is
simulated on the platform of PSCAD/EMTDC. The fixed
capacitors value is 2mF, the capacitors value of dynamic
capacitive compensation is 1.4mF and the inductors value
of dynamic inductive compensation is 5mH.
The output waveform of capacitive reactive power of
systems compensation circuit is given as follows, figure
5(a) gives the reactive power compensated of by this novel
device Q
SVC
, figure 5(b) gives the reactive power given by
the system Q
SYS
.

0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
-10
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
y
Qsvc

(a) reactive power compensated by this novel device
Main :
S
0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
-70
30
k
V
a
Qsys

(b) reactive power given by the system
Fig5. waveform of capacitive reactive power
The simulation waveform shows that the full
compensation of the reactive power is realized when the
system work in the steady-state, reactive power required
by the load is completely provided by fixed capacitors and
this novel devices, it has a good steady-state accuracy; In
addition, this novel device is able to track the reactive
power changes of the load, the transitional period
s
0.1S t < under capacitive compensation, compensation of
reactive power output overshoot 5kVar < ; the
transitional period
s
0.1S t < under inductive compensation,
the compensation of reactive power output does not
overshoot, it has a good dynamic performance.
Figure 6 gives the output voltage waveform of the
inverter, the RMS output voltage of working steady-state 1
is
Arms
115V e = , and the RMS output voltage of working
steady-state 2 is
Arms
72V e = , the output voltage distortion
changes from
THD
1.2% = to
THD
1.9% = , it shows that
the device has a good output of sinusoidal voltage and the
low value of harmonic. Figure 7 gives the waveform of
system current, the device current compensated and load
current, the simulation waveform shows a good
compensation of sinusoidal current, the current
distortion
THD
5% < , the system current has a great
decrease after compensation.

Fig.6 Output voltage waveform of inverter

Fir.7 Current waveform
29
. CONCLUSIONS
For the traditional reactive power compensation
device, there are many shortcomings in the choice of
switching and control method, such as great impulse
current, low reliability, low compensation accuracy,
reliable to produce oscillations. The new reactive power
compensation device presented in this paper can
automatically track system reactive power and absorb or
emit reactive power dynamically. It has the following
characteristics:
1) The inverter is controlled by open-loop SPWM, and
regulate the absorption or emission of reactive power by
adjusting the inverter output voltage dynamically, it has
good static and dynamic performance;
2) The conversion of absorption or emission of reactive
power of compensation device happened when the inverter
output voltage and bus voltage are the same, that is, the
voltage between capacitor and reactor approximately equal
to zero at that time thus the system does not produce
voltage and current impact;
3) The device operate reliably, not only can compensate
the reactive power quickly and accurately, but also
perform good governance on the harmonic which reduce
the loss.

REFERENCES
[1] D. Sullivan, J. Paserba, G. Reed, T. Croasdaile, R. Pape, D. Shoup,
M. Takeda, Y. Tamura, J. Arai, R. Beck, B, Milosevic, S. Hsu, F.
Graciaa, Design and Application of a Static VAR Compensator
for Voltage Support in the Dublin, Georgia Area, FACTS Panel
Session, IEEE PEST&D Conference and Exposition, Dallas Texas,
May 2006
[2] D. Sullivan, J. Paserba, G. Reed, T. Croasdaile, R. Westover, R.
Pape, M.Takeda, S. Yasuda, H. Teramoto, Y. Kono, K. Kuroda, K.
Temma, W.Hall, D. Mahoney, D. Miller, P. Henry, Voltage
Control in Southwest Utah With the St. George Static Var
System, FACTS Panel Session, IEEE PES Power Systems
Conference and Exposition, Atlanta Georgia,October 2006
[3] A. Johnson, R. Tucker, T. Tran, J. Paserba, D. Sullivan, C.
Anderson, D.Whitehead, Static Var Compensation Controlled via
Synchrophasors,Western Protective Relay Conference, Spokane,
Washington, October 2007
[4] E. Acha, C.R. Fuerte-Esquivel, H. Ambriz-Perez and C. Angeles-
Camacho, FACTS: Modelling and Simulation in Power Networks.
JohnWiley & Sons, England, 2004
[5] M. Wien, H. Schwarz, and T. Oelbaum, Performance analysis of
SVC, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 17, no. 9,
Sep. 2007
[6] N. G. Hingoran and L. Gyugy, Understanding FACTS, Concepts
andTechnology of Flexible AC Transmission System. New York:
Inst.Elect. Electron. Eng, Inc, 2000
[7] IEEE Special Stability Controls Working Group, System Dynamic
Performance Subcommittee, Power System Engineering
Committee, Static var compensator models for power flow and
dynamic performance simulation, IEEE Trans. Power Systems,
vol. 9, pp. 229-240, February 1994.
[8] Don Geddey, T. Kuwabara, T. Yoshino, Y. Noro, "Interaction
between DC current compensation control of TCR and system
background 2
nd
harmonic voltage", CIGRE, Symposium Kuala
Lumpur, 1999, Paper 240-03.
[9] WANG Zhao-an, YANG Jun, LIU Jin-jun. Harmonic
Suppressing and Reactive Power Compensation. Beijing: China
Machine Press, 2004
[10] Park J W, Harley R G, and Venayagamoorthy G K. New external
neuro-controller for series capacitive reactance compensator in a
power network[J], IEEE Trans Power System, 2004, 9(3),
1462~1472
[11] Yin Zhongdong, Zhan Jianhua, Xiao Xiangning et al. Study on
Harmonic Free Module Based Thyristor Controlled Reactor
Structure[J]. High Voltage Engineering, 2005, 31(12), 52-5



30