Sensitive load voltage compensation against voltage sags/swells and harmonics in the grid voltage and limit downstream fault currents using DVR

In the past decades, the power quality (PQ) has become a critical issue in highly automated industries and sensitive load centers. The voltage quality is the most important part of the PQ for customers. The voltage disturbances in the form of voltage sags, swells and harmonics can cause huge financial losses. In the past few years, the power electronic solutions have been proposed to avoid these problems. The dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) is one of the solutions. This paper proposes a new topology for single-phase DVR which is able to compensate multiple voltage disturbances and limit the downstream fault currents with a simple topology. The proposed DVR is based on the single-phase direct ac/ac converter which is energized from the main grid. As a result, there is no need for energy storage elements and dc link capacitors. The proposed topology can deal with high voltage with low voltage rating switches. Therefore, the switches can be IGBTs without needing an auxiliary forced commutation circuit as in thyristors which are high voltage switches. The performance of the proposed topology is validated by digital simulations and a laboratory scale prototype implementation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.