Energy and voltage management methods for multilevel converters for bulk power system power quality improvement

Electric arc furnaces (EAFs) are prevalent in the steel industry to melt iron and scrap steel. EAFs frequently cause large amplitude fluctuations of active and reactive power and are the source of significant power quality disturbances. Also EAFs comprise a major portion of industrial loading on the bulk power system. Typically, a static VAR compensator (SVC) or Static Synchronous compensator (STATCOM) are use to provide the reactive power support in order to alleviate the fluctuations in voltage at PCC. Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOMs) provide a power electronic-based means of embedded control for reactive power support. Integrating an energy storage system (ESS) such as large capacitors with the STATCOM will improve the device performance to have active power controllability as well as the reactive power. A cascaded multilevel STATCOM has been utilized in order to compensate for all the fluctuations caused by an EAF both in the RMS of the voltage at PCC and also the active power generation. Designing a sophisticated controller, it is possible to get the STATCOM track the variations of active power in load. Therefore, the generator does not need to produce the random active power demanded by the load --Abstract, page iv