Performance improvement of a system-level harmonic using a harmonic power flow controller

Penetration of harmonics from downstream low voltage networks and resonance phenomenon has caused the level of harmonics to increase in transmission networks. Compensation of these harmonics at high voltage levels is neither recommended nor cost effective. This is due to the fact that there is no single large non-linear load which is causing these harmonics, yet filtering at low voltage non-linear load sites cannot completely compensate the harmonics and the remaining harmonic at standard levels still flow into the upstream networks. The idea of controlling harmonics at a medium/high voltage level caused by the remaining harmonics flown from low voltage networks and possibly amplified by resonance conditions with the use of series active power filters has been proposed by the authors in a published work. Since, this application of a series active filter was new, it was preferred to assign a new name for such device, i.e. harmonic power flow controller or simply HPFC. This work looks into the control strategies applicable to a HPFC in more details. The shortcomings of the previous methods are now removed resulting in better performance of a HPFC.