A novel control method for power factor compensation on harmonic distorted low voltage power systems

The automatic power factor compensation is widely used in the LV distribution system for power factor correction and avoiding over-compensation. However, the wide popularization of the automatic reactive power compensation technology sometimes leads to a new problem, namely harmonic resonance, which causes some equipment damaging especially the capacitors used for the automatic compensation in the LV distribution system. A novel control strategy of the distribution reactive power compensation controller is presented in this paper for avoiding the harmonic resonance. Practical and robust control algorithms are proposed for the purpose of easy implementation in a micro-controller. In addition, the controller relies on common low cost sensing devices and does not require additional measurements. Analysis of representative case studies is conducted to illustrate how the proposed controller performs.