No description available.

No description available.

With the continuous growth of non-linear power electronic components and the increasing penetration of the distributed generation (DG), the potential for degradation in the power quality of the existing grid exists. There are concerns that the total harmonic distortion (THD) could reach unacceptable levels of 5% or higher. Moreover, there is additional potential of the presence of amplified harmonic components in the power network grid when the harmonic frequencies align with the resonant frequencies that are being injected by power electronic components of the DG. The above conditions could increase the electrical stresses on the insulation system of the power system components, and in particular, cable terminations are a concern. Standard cable terminations are designed to operate under power frequency in the power system network and their service life is considered accordingly. The research work aims to provide an understanding of the performance of the stress grading (SG) system of a commercial cable termination when the voltage waveform is distorted due to the presence of harmonics and when the high frequency and high dV/dt voltage waveforms are present from a typical power electronic drive. An aging experiment was performed for over a 600 hour time period using the pulse width modulated (PWM) high-voltage generator to quantify the impact of high frequency stress on SG system of cable termination. Furthermore, the cable termination was tested under power frequency, distorted voltage waveforms composed of fundamental and low order harmonics using an experiment setup that generate distorted voltage waveforms. Diagnostic techniques such as surface potential distribution measurements and surface temperature monitoring are used to analyze the termination performance. The surface tangential field is calculated based on the gradient of the termination surface potential as measured with an electrostatic voltmeter. The study shows that distorted voltage waveforms with high frequency and high dV/dt components, increase the electric field, resistive heating, and surface temperature rise in the terminations that use the field-dependent SG materials. The rise of electric field by as high as 27.1% and surface temperature rise of as high as 17C demonstrates the severity on the cable terminations. Such electric field enhancements for a period of time have a potential to initiate partial discharge that could lead to degradation of the termination. Moreover, surface temperature rise of 17 deg C could reduce the allowable ampacity of the cable conductor, reduce the short circuit levels, and reduce the feeder loading limits. The field-dependent electrical conductivity (σ(E,T)), permittivity (ε), and the temperature dependencies of (σ(E,T) and ε) have strong impact to degrade the electrical and thermal properties of the termination due to stress from the non-sinusoidal distorted voltage waveform. In order to minimize the surface temperature rise from the hotspot and electrical stress enhancement that eventually lead to insulation degradation and failure, the following recommendations are made for a suitable SG design for a termination to handle the severe voltage stress: Apply the capacitively graded termination in the grid where the distortion levels are low. Under the increased total harmonic distortion levels and HF components, resistively grading with higher degree of nonlinearity (achieved through the use of ZnO filler) is beneficial. The utilities could take preventive maintenance on medium voltage power cable accessories to prevent the termination failure before it actually occurs. Researchers could focus to resolve and minimize the rising power quality issues when the distribution generations are operated, improve the power electronic converters, and provide cost-effective harmonic filter solutions for harmonic mitigation.

No description available.

With the continuous growth of non-linear power electronic components and the increasing penetration of the distributed generation (DG), the potential for degradation in the power quality of the existing grid exists. There are concerns that the total harmonic distortion (THD) could reach unacceptable levels of 5% or higher. Moreover, there is additional potential of the presence of amplified harmonic components in the power network grid when the harmonic frequencies align with the resonant frequencies that are being injected by power electronic components of the DG. The above conditions could increase the electrical stresses on the insulation system of the power system components, and in particular, cable terminations are a concern. Standard cable terminations are designed to operate under power frequency in the power system network and their service life is considered accordingly. The research work aims to provide an understanding of the performance of the stress grading (SG) system of a commercial cable termination when the voltage waveform is distorted due to the presence of harmonics and when the high frequency and high dV/dt voltage waveforms are present from a typical power electronic drive. An aging experiment was performed for over a 600 hour time period using the pulse width modulated (PWM) high-voltage generator to quantify the impact of high frequency stress on SG system of cable termination. Furthermore, the cable termination was tested under power frequency, distorted voltage waveforms composed of fundamental and low order harmonics using an experiment setup that generate distorted voltage waveforms. Diagnostic techniques such as surface potential distribution measurements and surface temperature monitoring are used to analyze the termination performance. The surface tangential field is calculated based on the gradient of the termination surface potential as measured with an electrostatic voltmeter. The study shows that distorted voltage waveforms with high frequency and high dV/dt components, increase the electric field, resistive heating, and surface temperature rise in the terminations that use the field-dependent SG materials. The rise of electric field by as high as 27.1% and surface temperature rise of as high as 17C demonstrates the severity on the cable terminations. Such electric field enhancements for a period of time have a potential to initiate partial discharge that could lead to degradation of the termination. Moreover, surface temperature rise of 17 deg C could reduce the allowable ampacity of the cable conductor, reduce the short circuit levels, and reduce the feeder loading limits. The field-dependent electrical conductivity (σ(E,T)), permittivity (ε), and the temperature dependencies of (σ(E,T) and ε) have strong impact to degrade the electrical and thermal properties of the termination due to stress from the non-sinusoidal distorted voltage waveform. In order to minimize the surface temperature rise from the hotspot and electrical stress enhancement that eventually lead to insulation degradation and failure, the following recommendations are made for a suitable SG design for a termination to handle the severe voltage stress: Apply the capacitively graded termination in the grid where the distortion levels are low. Under the increased total harmonic distortion levels and HF components, resistively grading with higher degree of nonlinearity (achieved through the use of ZnO filler) is beneficial. The utilities could take preventive maintenance on medium voltage power cable accessories to prevent the termination failure before it actually occurs. Researchers could focus to resolve and minimize the rising power quality issues when the distribution generations are operated, improve the power electronic converters, and provide cost-effective harmonic filter solutions for harmonic mitigation.

Power system harmonics and interharmonics are power quality concerns that have received a great deal of attention in recent years. These phenomena can have several adverse effects on power system operation. The main harmonic and interharmonic sources are devices based on power electronics. An emerging class of harmonic sources is comprised of power electronic-based home appliances. These appliances are dispersed throughout the low-voltage distribution system, and their collective impact can result in unacceptable levels of voltage distortion. The characterization of home appliances based on their harmonic currents is an important step toward understanding the impact of these devices. This thesis presents an evaluation of the relative severity of the harmonic currents from these devices, and the impact of the disparity of the harmonic current phase angles. Typically, the voltage supplied to each harmonic source is already distorted. This distortion causes a change of the harmonic current magnitudes (traditionally referred to as the attenuation effect). Common harmonic analysis methods cannot take this variation into account because they use a typical harmonic current source model specified by a supply voltage having little or no distortion. This thesis characterizes the harmonic attenuation effect of power electronic-based appliances. One of the findings is that harmonic amplification, rather than attenuation, can occur under credible voltage conditions. This finding had not been made previously. In order to include the harmonic attenuation/amplification in appliance modeling, a measurement-based harmonic modeling technique is proposed. One of the most economic and effective ways to mitigate harmonics in power systems is through the use of harmonic shunt passive filters. These filters can be of many topologies. Selecting these topologies is a task that, today, depends on the experience and judgment of the filter designer. An investigation is carried out on the common filter topologies, and the most cost-effective topologies for mitigating harmonics are identified. As many of the larger harmonic loads also generate interharmonics, interharmonics have become prevalent in today’s medium-voltage distribution system. Mitigation cannot be carried out until the interharmonic-source location is known. A method for interharmonic source determination is proposed and then verified through simulation and field measurement studies.

The present work studies the disturbances created in the electric system of a pumped storage power plant, which is an hydraulic generation facility where the machines can work as turbines or pumps, by the operation of a static frequency converter (SFC). The SFC is used for starting the synchronous machines at the station when in the pump mode. During the starting process several equipment is connected to the SFC being possible to get affected by the disturbances generated. These disturbances mainly include the creation of transient overvoltages during the commutation of the semiconductor devices of the SFC and the introduction of harmonics in the network currents and voltages. This work analyzes the possible effects of the SFC operation over the station equipment based on computer simulations. For this purpose, the complete system was modeled and the starting process simulated in a computer transient simulator program. The work begins with a general review of the effects of electric disturbances over high voltage equipment and in particular of the disturbances generated by power electronics conversion equipment. Then the models for the different kind of equipment present in the system are discussed and formulated. The control system that governs the operation of the SFC during the starting process is analyzed later as well as the operation conditions. Once the model of the system is set up, the harmonic analysis of the electric network is done by frequency domain and time domain methods. Time domain methods are also employed for the analysis of the commutation transient produced by the SFC operation. Finally, the simulation results are used to evaluate the impact of the SFC operation on the station equipment, especially on the generator step up transformer. / Master of Science

Firstly, this thesis investigates the electrical power harmonics in an attempt to utilize harmonic current and its distortion power in a novel idea to reconvert the distortion power into useful power. This is done, in order to feed different DC or AC loads in single and three-phase power system by using passive or active filters and accordingly, develop a new topology of hybrid active power filter (HAPF). In addition, this circuit can be considered as a power factor corrector (PFC) because it reduces the total harmonic distortion (THD) and improves the power factor (PF). Secondly, this thesis works on a new design of active power factor correction (APFC) circuit presenting two circuits with the same design principle: the first design consists of two active switches without an external complex control circuit, while the second design contains a single active switch with an additional control circuit. The main contribution of this circuit is 98% reduction of the inductor's value used in the newly proposed PFC circuit in comparison with the conventional boost converter which may lead to a huge reduction in size, weight and the cost of the new PFC circuit. Also, the active switches depend on a carefully designed switching pattern that results in an elimination of the third order harmonic from the input source current which decreases the value of total current harmonic distortion (THDI) to (14%) and improves the input PF to (0.99). Consequently, the simplicity of the design without requiring a complex control circuit and without a snubber circuit plus the minimum size of inductor, gives the newly proposed circuit the superiority on other PFC circuits. Thirdly, this research aims to describe the distortion power through submitting two novel power terms called effective active power (Pef ) & reactive power (Qef ) terms with a new power diagram called Right-Angled Power Triangle (RAPT) Diagram. In addition, a novel de nition of total apparent power (St) has been submitted in order to illustrate the physical meaning of (St) in non-sinusoidal systems. The new RAPT Diagram is based on the orthogonality law and depends on geometrical summation to describe the relationship between different aspects (apparent-active-reactive) of power, and different components (total-fundamental distortion), drawing a bridge to connect the time domain with the frequency domain in a two-dimensional diagram.

The increasing demand for sustainable energy is one of the driving forces behind the increasing use of wind power by means of wind-turbines in electric power systems. Modern wind turbines commonly employ variable-speed-generator technology associated with a power-electronic converter as part of the grid connection. A drawback of the use of power electronics is the presence of harmonic emissions. Consequently a systematic study on distortion from wind power installations is needed; this holds for individual wind turbines as well for complete installations.In the work, measurements and analysis of harmonic emissions were performed on a number of wind-turbines in several wind parks in Northern Sweden. The measurements on the individual wind turbines reveal that the harmonic emissions are different from each other, even for different turbines from the same manufacturer. However in general the characteristic harmonics dominate the harmonic emissions. Furthermore, a long-term measurement shows that the dominant frequencies in the emission change with time.The total emission from a wind park into the public grid is determined by the emission from individual turbines and by the properties of the wind park. To study the impact of the wind park on the propagation a ``transfer function'' method has been introduced, and applied by means of calculation and simulation. The method is based on a mathematical model that predicts the harmonic propagation from the wind turbines to the public grid in the frequency range up to 50 kHz. Applying the model to three example parks reveals that, the amplitudes at the resonance frequency are strongly dependent on the resistance of both underground cables and transformer, especially at high frequencies. In other words, the higher order harmonics are damped a lot.In conclusion, wind park harmonic emissions into the public grid are due to the combination of emission from individual wind turbines and the propagation through the collection grid.

Electric vehicle (EV) development has gone into an accelerated pace in recent years to address pressing concerns on energy security, the environment, and the sustainability of transportation. The future market success of EVs is still uncertain, but the current shift in the automotive industry is indicating a possible bright future for EVs. Because of its unique load characteristics, an extensive deployment of EVs will not only bring challenges to power systems, but will enable new opportunities as well. The objective of this work is to address the increased third harmonic currents expected with the introduction of EVs and to explore the potential of leveraging flexible EV charging to increase wind power production. Since EV chargers rely on a nonlinear power conversion process to obtain a controllable DC source from the utility AC supply, it is expected that these devices will aggravate third harmonic current issues. In fact, utility harmonic field data show that, even without EVs, distribution feeders are already experimenting elevated levels of third harmonic currents. To address present and future utility harmonic filtering needs, a practical third harmonic hybrid active filter for medium voltage (MV) applications is proposed. Its design is based on strict utility requirements of cost, reliability, and ease of system implementation. The operation and performance of the proposed filter is verified through simulations and two experimental setups, one tested at 7.2 kV. Furthermore, a system impact study of the proposed filter is performed using actual data for a typical residential/small commercial distribution feeder. Because vehicles remain stationary most of the time, EVs have the potential of being flexibly charged, providing a spectrum of opportunities for system operators. The recent increase in wind power penetration in the U.S. is raising concerns on how to accommodate this stochastic renewable energy resource in day-ahead scheduling operations. In this work, a detailed integrated day-ahead scheduling framework is developed to explore the impact of leveraging flexible EV charging to balance out the variability and uncertainty of wind power generation. It is determined that the full benefits of balancing wind power generation with flexible EV charging may not be achieved in congested power systems. A potential solution based on deploying power routers (PRs) to augment the flexibility of the transmission system is proposed. Simulation results are presented for a test system based on the IEEE 39-bus system.