INTRODUCTION

Power quality is the set of limits of electrical properties that allows electrical systems to function in their intended manner without significant loss of performance or life. The term is used to describe electric power that drives an electrical load and the load's ability to function properly with that electric power. Without the proper power, an electrical device (or load) may malfunction, fail prematurely or not operate at all. There are many ways in which electric power can be of poor quality and many more causes of such poor quality power for example is voltage sag. The voltage sag is a decrease between 0.1 and 0.9 p.u. in root-mean-square (rms) voltage at the power frequency during 0.5 cycles up to 1 minute. Voltage sags are the most common power disturbances. At a typical industrial site, it is not unusual to see several sags per year at the service entrance, and far more at equipment terminals. Voltage sags can arrive from the utility; however, in most cases, the majority of sags are generated inside a building. For example, in residential wiring, the most common cause of voltage sags is the starting current drawn by refrigerator and air conditioning motors. Sags do not generally disturb incandescent or fluorescent lighting, motors or heaters. However, some electronic equipment lacks sufficient internal energy storage and, therefore, cannot ride through sags in the supply voltage. Equipment may be able to ride through very brief, deep sags, or it may be able to ride through longer but shallower sags. Voltage Sags are caused by abrupt increases in loads such as short circuits or faults, motor starting, or electric heaters turning on, or they are caused by abrupt increases in source impedance, typically caused by a loose connection. There are many solutions to prevent damage due to voltage sag. Voltage sag mitigation that will be explained in this report is active series compensator.

ACTIVE SERIES COMPENSATORS

Advances in power electronic technologies and new topologies for these devices have resulted in new options for providing voltage sag ride-through support to critical loads. One of the important new options is a device that can boost the voltage by injecting a voltage in series with the remaining voltage during a voltage sag condition. These are referred to as active series compensation devices or series active filter. Active series compensator is widely introduced for voltage sag compensation purposes. They are available in size ranges from small single-phase devices (1 to 5 kVA) to very large devices that can be applied on the medium-voltage systems (2 MVA and larger).

Fig.1 shows the structure and location of a typical Series active filter on the feeder of a sensitive load. As shown in Fig. 1, Series active filter consists of four major parts as follows: 1- Voltage source inverter (VSI) 2- Energy storage 3- Passive filters 4- Injection transformers The three phase voltage source inverter (VSI) is the main part of Series active filter which principally switched by pulse width modulation (PWM) pattern. Energy storage in Series active filter provides active power required for voltage compensation. Passive filters in Series active filter configuration are mostly series LC type and used to eliminate the harmonic distortions from output voltage of the inverter. Injection transformers consist of three single phase transformers that boost the output voltage of Series active filter to the nominal voltage of the compensated feeder.

THE PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION The single line diagram of a system with the Active filter connected in series with the supply is shown in Fig. 2 (a). The Series active filter injects a voltage (Vc) in series with the terminal voltage (Vt) so that the load voltage (VL) is always constant in magnitude. Fig. 2 (b) shows the phasor diagram of Series active filter when the terminal voltage is having sag (Vt ) and swell (Vt) in the voltage.

Fig. 2(a). Single line diagram of series active filter

Fig. 2(b). Phasor diagram of series active filter The series inverter controls the magnitude and angle of the voltage injected in series with the line and this voltage injection is to influence the power flow on the line. The actual value of the injected voltage can be obtained in several ways such as Direct voltage injection mode, phase angle shifter emulation mode, line impedance emulation mode and automatic power flow control mode. In this paper, the series inverter operates in the direct voltage injection mode. The basic idea of a Series active filter is to inject the missing voltage cycles into the system through series injection transformer whenever voltage distortions are present in the system supply voltage. During normal operation, the capacitor receives energy from the main supply source. When voltage swells or sags are detected, the capacitor delivers dc supply to the inverter. The inverter ensures that only the missing voltage is injected to the transformer. A relatively small capacitor is present on dc side of the PWM solid state inverter, and the voltage over this capacitor is kept constant by exchanging energy with the energy storage reservoir. The required output voltage is obtained by using pulse-width modulation switching pattern.

REFERENCES
1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_quality 2- Lecture note week 2 3- Series active filter application in voltage quality problems compensation, S.Lotfi and M. Sajedi, Depeartment of electrical engineering, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran.

Active Power Compensation of Voltage Source Converters with Energy Storage Capacitors
Hailian Xie, Student Member, IEEE, Lennart ngquist, Member, IEEE and Hans-Peter Nee, Senior 1- Member, IEEE