CAPACITOR SWITCHING TRANSIENT MODELING AND ANALYSIS ON AN ELECTRICAL UTILITY DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM USING SIMULINK SOFTWARE

The quality of electric power has been a constant topic of study, mainly because inherent problems to it can bring great economic losses in industrial processes. Among the factors that affect power quality, those related to transients originated from capacitor bank switching in the primary distribution systems must be highlighted. In this thesis, the characteristics of the transients resulting from the switching of utility capacitor banks are analyzed, as well as factors that influence there intensities. A practical application of synchronous closing to reduce capacitor bank switching transients is presented. A model that represents a real distribution system 12.47kV from Shelbyville sub-station was built and simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK software for purposes of this study. A spectral analysis of voltage and current waves is made to extract the acceptable capacitor switching times by observing the transient over-voltages and, harmonic components. An algorithm is developed for practical implementation of zero-crossing technique by taking the results obtained from the SIMULINK model