Design of optimized hybrid active power filter for electric arc furnace load

Nowadays, non linear loads are being used at a greater rate in domestic and industrial applications. As a result, there is increase in harmonics at distortion side of the power system. The harmonics are responsible for current and voltage disturbances and deteriorate the performance of the system. There are various strategies for compensating the adverse effects of harmonics on the performance of load and sometimes the entire power system. Therefore, to minimize the harmonics, the filters are very much essential. The most widely used technique is the application of power filters in the system. In this paper, the harmonic minimization is carried out by incorporating passive filters and active filters which are generated due to the furnace load operation. The proposed work focuses on using a controlled strategy for extracting the voltage and current harmonics from arc furnace load using hybrid active power filters; and has been implemented using MATLAB. The research investigates the analysis and comparison of implemented shunt hybrid active power filter by tuning conventional PI controller and optimal controller tuned with Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) on the furnace load. The proposed technique gives the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) content which is minimum as compared to the conventional PI controller. Thus, the implementation of the proposed work leads to an improvement in overall performance of system.