Comprehensive study on the power rating of a railway power conditioner using thyristor switched capacitor

AC traction networks have inherently adverse impacts on the power supply grids which mainly consist of large negative sequence current, undesirable harmonics and low power factor. To compensate all of these power quality problems, a power quality conditioner called railway power conditioner (RPC) is proposed and discussed. However, the RPC power rating is considerably dependent on the traction load conditions, and it has also some influential effects on the initial costs. In this study, the RPC power rating is thoroughly analysed, and a reducing method is proposed based on thyristor switched capacitor in order to keep the power rating under the optimal value in different traction load conditions. Finally, a precise simulation study is done using MATLAB/SIMULINK program to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.