A Z-Source Railway Static Power Conditioner for Power Quality Improvement

Electrified railway system is a huge single phase load which imposes some serious power quality problems such as negative sequence current (NSC), harmonics, low power factor, pantographs arcs, resonance, electromagnetic interference, etc. to power grid. Several compensation strategies and configurations such as RPC, APQC, HBRPC, and etc. have been introduced up to now. The main problem corresponding to these compensators is their high nominal ratings. In this paper a new topology of railway static power compensator is presented. In proposed configuration, a Z-source converter is employed to benefit the pros of such converter in electrified railway system, especially it's higher electrical efficiency and lower switching losses. Theoretical calculations and simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed configuration.