| Power quality has become a serious concern to many utility customers in recent times. Among the many power quality problems, voltage sags are one of the most common and most mischievous, affecting industrial and commercial customers. They are primarily caused by power system faults at the transmission and distribution level, and thus, are mostly unavoidable. Their effect depends on the equipment sensitivities to the magnitude and duration of these sags and each can cost an industry up to few million dollars. To counter these limitations, many solutions at the customer end have been proposed which include Constant Voltage Transformers (CVT's), UPS and line frequency transformer based Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). These approaches have their respective limitations with regard to capabilities, size and cost. This research proposes a new approach to mitigating these voltage sags involving the use of high frequency transformer link. Suitable switching logic and control strategies have been implemented. The proposed approach in a one-phase application is verified with computer simulations and by a hardware proof-of-concept prototype. Application to three-phase system is verified through simulations. Application of high frequency transformers in other utility applications such as active filters and static compensators is also looked at. |
