Power quality enhancement utilising single-phase unified power quality conditioner: digital signal processor-based experimental validation

Abstract

This study is based on a single-phase unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) to enhance power quality problem in single-phase systems. A simple control approach is implemented and validated through simulation as well as experimental studies. A laboratory prototype of UPQC is designed and developed using a digital signal processor. The performance of UPQC is validated experimentally under several operating conditions. It is found that the UPQC in single-phase system effectively compensates the important power quality issues, such as the load reactive power, load current harmonics, voltage harmonics, voltage sag, voltage swell and voltage flicker. Under distorted source voltage having total harmonics distortion (THD) of 14.1% with a non-linear load producing a distorted current (THD of 30.98%), the UPQC simultaneously compensates these harmonics resulting sinusoidal source current (THD of 3.77%) and load voltage (THD of 2.54%).