| Reactive power compensation and harmonic reduction are two relevant research problems that exist in modern electric power systems. With the advancement of modern power electronics technology in both circuits and devices, new and better solutions are being proposed and applied to solve these two problems. To compensate reactive power, a cascading voltage source inverter with a Phase-Shift, Unipolar SPWM switching scheme is proposed. The main circuit of this inverter is composed of several identical voltage source H-bridge inverters connected in cascade form. Advantages of this scheme include use of identically rated storage capacitors, similarly rated switches and diodes, quick system response to load changes, and easily achievable redundancy. To solve the harmonic reduction problem, the flying capacitor multilevel voltage source inverter is adopted to construct a novel power line conditioner. The Phase Shift SPWM switching scheme is also employed to operate the switches of this inverter. As a result, it is possible to extend the new power line conditioner to distribution systems or industrial applications where voltage usually ranges from 4.16kV to 13.8kV. It is shown that the proposed power line conditioner not only balances the unbalanced load, but simultaneously compensates the reactive power as well. |
