Smart meter based selective harmonics compensation in buildings distribution systems with AC/DC microgrids

Preserving the power quality of hybrid AC/DC systems becomes more challenging as the number of loads and interconnections increases. To improve the power quality, several selective harmonics elimination methods and active filtering devices have been presented in the literature; however, their implementation costs are relatively high. Moreover, most of the proposed solutions require changing/modifying the existing grid infrastructure, such as installing current transducers at the point of common coupling (PCC). In this paper, a harmonic compensation method is proposed for hybrid AC/DC microgrid systems based on smart meter monitoring, which is applicable to existing building-scale microgrids and can reduce the costs significantly. The feasibility of the proposed harmonic compensation method is investigated based on the smart meter data for a typical building at The University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for reducing selected harmonics.