Power Quality Enhancement in Existing Smart Grid Station: A Case Study Using Real-time Data

This work deals with the study and analysis of different power quality (PQ) issues in an existing smart grid station (SGS) in UAE (United Arab Emirates) to offer a viable PQ solution through installing the active filters for harmonic mitigation. This SGS is used to reduce the peak load of the UAE plant’s fleet management while providing increased visibility on the consumption from system loads. However, during the assessment of SGS, it is seen that the increasing penetration and intermittent nature of renewable sources, imposes severe PQ issues such as harmonics and voltage fluctuations at SGS. Moreover, power electronic equipment and nonlinear loads that are interfaced through the industry may also pose significant current harmonics. Furthermore, two capacitor banks are installed at SGS for reactive power support, which are failed due to resonance during poor PQ phenomenon. To address these challenges and provide effective solutions, the poor power quality indices as well as voltage profile at SGS is verified by reproducing the SGS behavior. A case study using real-time data and waveforms is performed at existing SGS, which is recorded using the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) installed at SGS. Further, to restrict the harmonics limit as per IEEE standard and reduce the voltage distortion, combination of passive and active filter is suggested to be installed at different MDBs of the plant SGS. The enhanced SGS performance is demonstrated with the sinusoidal gird current and voltage waveforms with reduced individual harmonic distortion (IHD) and the total harmonic distortion (THD) below 8%, complying the IEEE standards for LV networks.