A simplified control strategy for a high-power low-distortion synchronous link converter VAr compensator

A high power low distortion static VAr compensator was proposed by the authors in 1997. The harmonics are eliminated by incorporating a low power IGBT based controlled current auxiliary converter in conjunction with a high power GTO based converter. The current reference required by the auxiliary converter is calculated by an involved procedure which makes the overall compensation process complicated. In this paper, a simplified control scheme for the VAr compensator is proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is investigated for a case where the VAr compensator is specifically used for load compensation and also for the case where it is used as a general purpose VAr generator. Detailed simulation studies of the schemes are presented. Experimental results obtained from a laboratory prototype are provided to demonstrate the viability of the proposed method.