Power quality and technologies What is power quality?

Technologies
Power quality is commonly defined as the power grids ability to supply a clean and stable power flow as an always available power supply. The power flow should have a pure sinusoidal wave form and it should remain within specified voltage and frequency tolerances. In todays electrical networks, deviations from these ideal conditions are frequent due to increasing non-linear and other loads disturbing the grid. Power generation is also becoming more complex with new players and technologies entering the business which used to be a fairly stable operating environment. All of this adds new challenges to the power grid operators. Harmonic filtering Active Harmonic Filtering Harmonic filtering Reactive Power Compensation Dynamic reactive power compensation Reactive Power Compensation

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Why is good power quality necessary?

The consequences of insufficient power quality can inflict serious losses on business and economy. In the worstcase scenario, it may pose a threat to human life in mission critical applications and highly sensitive environments, such as hospitals. Good power quality saves money and energy. Direct savings to consumers come from lower energy cost and reactive power tariffs. Indirect savings are made by avoiding circumstances

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such as damage and premature aging of equipment, loss of production or loss of data and work. Power quality can affect the overall company performance, which is a fact easily overlooked by the management.

The problem
No real-life power source is ideal and generally can deviate from perfection at least in the following ways: Reactive power: Power is defined as the rate of flow of energy past a given point. In alternating current circuits, energy storage elements such as inductance and capacitance may result in periodic reversals of the direction of energy flow. The portion of power flow that - averaged over a complete cycle of the AC waveform- results in net transfer of energy in one direction is known as real power. The portion of power flow due to stored energy, which returns to the source in each cycle, is known as reactive power. Reactive Power is a component of apparent power (volt-amps/ VAR) which does not produce any real power (watt) transfer and is the phase angle between the current and voltage in the alternating current circuits.

Apparent power S is a sum of its vector components real power P and reactive Power Q Harmonics: A harmonic is defined as a component with a frequency that is an integer multiple (the so-called order of harmonic n) of the fundamental frequency. The harmonic number indicates the harmonic frequency: the first harmonic is the fundamental frequency (50 or 60 Hz), the second harmonic is the component with frequency two times the fundamental (100 or 120 Hz), etc.

Source: Handbook of Power Quality, Angelo Baggini, John Wiley & Sons 2008

Voltage variations: Voltage variations can be divided into several categories such as noise, sags, spikes, surges, transients and undervoltage.

Sag is a short-term decrease in voltage lasting anywhere from milliseconds up to a few seconds. Sags starve a machine of the electricity it needs to function, causing computer crashes or equipment lock-ups. Sag is usually caused by equipment start-up such as elevators, heating and air-conditioning equipment, compressors, and copy machines or nearby short circuits on the utility system. Noise is sporadic voltage changes consisting of frequencies higher than the normal 50Hz/60-Hz power frequency due to any number of causes, including arc welders, loose wiring, and nearby radio and TV transmitters. Spike is a very brief (nanoseconds to milliseconds) change in voltage ranging from tens to thousands of volts. Surge is a short-term increase in voltage, lasting up to a few seconds. It is due either to customer equipment operation, such as air conditioners or motors switching on and off, or to utility activities, such as capacitor switching utility and customer equipment operations, nearby lightning strikes, falling tree limbs on power lines, and even static discharges. Transient: Rapid change in the waveform that occurs in both voltage and current. Transients are so- called switching transients of high power equipment or fast changes in voltage or current caused by unplanned phenomena such as weather etc. Also called a spike. Undervoltage is a decrease in voltage lasting longer than a few seconds. Usually due to undersized wiring at the facility, but can also be caused by overloaded utility circuits and result in brownouts.

Flicker: The term flicker is used to refer to the subjective impression that is experienced by human beings when subjected to changes occurring in the illumination intensity of light sources. From an electrical point of view, flicker is caused by voltage fluctuations with amplitude, which is generally much lower than the threshold of immunity for electrical equipment. So it can be said that the major effect of rapid voltage fluctuations is flicker. Fluctuating loads such as arc furnaces, welders, etc., whose power demand experiences wide and rapid variations,

can be potential sources of voltage fluctuations producing flicker. Network unbalance: Network unbalance and different line voltages are often caused by single-phase loads, phase-to-phase loads and unbalanced three-phase loads such as welding equipment, induction furnace etc. The consequences of network unbalances are impaired regulating and control equipment, unbalanced transformer load (losses and wear and tear). Electrical resonance occurs in an electric circuit at a particular resonance frequency when the impedance between the input and output of the circuit is at a minimum (or when the transfer function is at a maximum). Often this happens when the impedance between the input and output of the circuit is almost zero and when the transfer function is close to one. Resonant circuits exhibit ringing and can generate higher voltages and currents than are fed into them.

The solution
Depending on application and case-bycase analysis and measurements, several solutions can be applied to improve the power quality. In normal cases, the problems can be solved to certain extent by using passive harmonic filtering and normal reactive power compensation solution. However the performance requirements and disturbances in the grid by non-linear loads such as drives, computers etc lead in most cased to more sophisticated dynamic compensation solutions.