POWER ELECTRONICS APPLICATIONS IN UTILITY SYSTEMS

(IECON Panel Discussion)

Dr. Luis Moran Department of Electrical Engineering Universidad de Concepcion, Casilla 160 - C Email: Imoran@die.udec.cl Concepcion, CHILE

Digest
One of the major changes associated with the operation of power systems is related with deregulation and power quality. The main objective of deregulation is to facilitate the development of a competitive electricity market. The main economic emphasis of a competitive market is to reduce the cost of electricity, that is to minimize the cost of electric power generation by the introduction of a nondiscriminatory competition. A competitive market allows users to select the utility company or generator that will provide the electric power supply. This selection is normally done based on the price and the quality of service. The quality of the service is basically a power quality problem which is basically a technical issue while deregulation deals with the operation mode and principles of the complete power system, that is generation, transmission and distribution. In order to provide technical solutions to the new challenges imposed in power systems, two new.concepts have been adopted by the technical community. These concepts are the Flexible Transmission Systems (FACTS) and the Flexible, Reliable and Intelligent Electric Energy Delivery System (FRIENDS). The acronym FACTS identifies altemating current transmission systems that incorporates power electronicsbased controllers to enhance the controllability and increase power transfer capability. The FACTS initiative was originally launched to solve the transmission system problems in the late 1980s due to restrictions on transmission line construction, that is to facilitate the increase power transfer capability of transmission systems, and to keep power flow over designated routes. On the other hand, the purpose of FRIENDS is to developed a desirable structure for power delivery systems where Distributed Generations (DGs) and Distributed Energy Storage Systems (DESS) are located near the demand side, and to develop reliable and energy conservation oriented operating strategies of the power systems. In existing radial type power distribution systems, these dispersed energy resources cause many problems in the distribution system, such as over voltage at the end of the feeder and fault protection problems. Moreover, as the deregulation of the power industry proceeds, power quality is becoming a commodity of the industry. Namely, power quality as well as electrical energy can be sold to customers when more reliable and more qualified power is needed in the demand side than those of the power transmission network. Normally, power quality is defined by the following three items, except fiequency: That is continuity of the power supply (momentary power interruptions, temporary interruption and sustained interruption), voltage stability (under / over voltage, voltage sag, voltage swell, flicker, etc.) and voltage waveform distortion (harmonics, unbalance). The implementation of these two new concepts in power systems requires the development of high power compensators and controllers. The technology needed for this is based in high power electronics with its real time operating control. In the near future, power systems will look like the one shown in Fig. 1, in which most of the static power compensator develop so far has been included. The use of such devices will improve the over all reliability and associated quality, with a significant reduction in the operating cost. However, once a sufficiently large number of these fast compensators and controllers are deployed over the system, the coordination and overall control to provide maximum system benefits and prevent undesirable interactions with different system configurations and objectives, under normal and contingency conditions, will present a different technological challenge. There are two approaches for the realization of power electronics based compensators: one employs conventional thyristor-switched capacitors and reactors, and the other uses self-commutated switching converters. Both schemes help to control efficiently real and reactive power, but only the second one can be used to compensate current and voltage harmonics. Moreover self-commutated switching converters present better response time and more compensation flexibility. The development of such compensators is one of most important challenges of power electronics.

0-7803-7906-3/03/$17.0002003 EEE.

3027

REFERENCES
[l] Y. H. Song, A. T. Johns, Flexible AC Transmission Systems, The Institution of Electrical Engineers,

[2] K. Nara, J. Hasegawa, T. Oyama, K. Tsuji, T. Ise,

FRIENDS - Forwarding to Future Power Delivery System, in IEEE Con,f. on Harmonics and Quality of Power, Oct. 2000, pp. 8 - 18.

UK, 1999.

Fig. 1. A power distribution system with different static compensators and controllers.

3028