COMPENSATION FOR REACTIVE POWER

AND HARMONIC CURRENTS DRAWN BY

NON-LINEAR LOAD IN PV-MICRO HYDRO
GRID
Raj Krishna Nepal Bibek Khanal Sanket Khatiwada
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Central Campus, Pulchowk, IOE, TU Central Campus, Pulchowk, IOE, TU Central Campus, Pulchowk, IOE, TU
Lalitpur, Nepal Lalitpur, Nepal Lalitpur, Nepal
[email protected] [email protected]

Nirajan Bhandari Bishal Rijal Raisha Karmmacharya

Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering Ajay Thapa
Central Campus, Pulchowk, IOE, TU Khwopa College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Lalitpur, Nepal IOE,TU Central Campus, Pulchowk, IOE, TU
Lalitpur, Nepal Lalitpur, Nepal

Abstract— This paper presents a simulation approach to Figure 1 shows the daily load curve of MHP plant where
enhance the power quality of a PV-micro hydro grid supplying the shaded area represents the energy wasted in the dump load.
both linear consumer load and non-linear industrial load by As all the energy supplied by the MHP plant is not fully
integrating Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF), utilizing utilized, the load factor of such plant is very low. The load
instantaneous PQ theory and hysteresis current control band factor can be increased by encouraging rural industry which
logic. The non-linear load draws reactive power and harmonic has mostly non-linear load during day time. If the sum of
current from the source thereby affecting the power quality. maximum demand of rural industry and consumers load at day
The integration of the SAPF at the point of common coupling time is greater than the capacity of existing MHP, PV plant
(PCC) offers reactive power and harmonic current
can be added to supply extra power as shown in figure 2.
compensation, ensuring that the current supply to the grid
remains nearly sinusoidal and proportional to the active power.
By injecting equal and opposite harmonic components, the
SAPF effectively reduces Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)
from 7% to 2.96%, thereby enhancing the overall power quality
of the PV-micro hydro grid system.

Keywords—non-linear load, reactive power, harmonic

current, shunt active power filter, hysteresis current control

I. INTRODUCTION
In context of Nepal, hydro power plants ranging from
capacity of 10 kW to 100kW are classified as Micro Hydro
Power (MHP) plant[1]. As national grid extension to rural
areas with few populations is not economical due to high cost
of transmission line and power loss in the line, the concept of Figure 2: MHP plant with PV source connected to linear consumer load and
MHP plant is very popular in Rural areas of Nepal for non-linear industrial load.
electrification. Electronic Load Controller (ELC) is used for
speed control instead to conventional speed governor to The industrial load could be inductive as well as non-
reduce the cost of plant which dissipates the surplus energy linear. Non- linear load draws current in abrupt short pulses.
into the dump load and maintain the stability of the system These short pulses distort the current waveform, leading to the
even if the rural areas load is fluctuating in nature. generation of harmonics. Harmonics can cause various issues
such as poor power factor, overheating, reduced efficiency,
and the unnecessary tripping of circuit breakers, all of which
contribute to power quality problems [2]. A PV source is
unable to support the reactive load and harmonic currents
generated by non-linear loads [3]. This issue could become
more significant in the future, making it crucial to address it.
There are essentially two methods for mitigating power
quality issues. The first method is load conditioning, which
aims to make the load resistant to harmonics. This involves
making equipment less sensitive to harmonics and power
disturbances, though it is not always feasible in practice. The
Figure 1: Daily load curve of MHP plant.
second method is power line conditioning. This approach
involves installing a line conditioning system at the point of A. Modeling of non-linear load
common coupling (PCC) to suppress or counteract the adverse
effects produced by non-linear harmonic-generating loads [4].
Traditionally, passive filters were employed to address issues
related to harmonic generation and reactive power
disturbances. However, they had significant drawbacks,
including resonance issues, large size, fixed compensation
characteristics, and the impact of source impedance on
performance, which made this solution less appealing. As a
result, the concept of active power filters was introduced.
Active power filters offer a more effective solution compared
to conventional passive filters for mitigating harmonic and
reactive power disturbance problems [5]. Basically, shunt Figure 4: Simulation model of non-linear load.
active power filter operates as a current source injecting the
current equal and opposite of harmonic components generated Figure 4 shows the simulation model of the non-linear
by the load. The use of shunting active filter benefits in system consisting of rectifier circuit that consumes non
reducing the current harmonics produced by non-linear loads sinusoidal current. Here we have used diodes as our circuit
and benefits in improving the power factor quality at PCC. elements, resistor of 10 ohms and capacitance value of 5000
microfarad.
II. METHODOLOGY B. Modeling of grid connected PV system
The overall modeling of the system and the observation
of the results are done in MATLAB/SIMULINK (2021a).
Figure 3 shows the flowchart of the overall methodologies of
the system.

Figure 5: Simulation model of PV system using MPPT.

Figure 5 shows the simulation model of PV system using

MPPT algorithm. Here, the 50 KW solar panel is modeled
and MPPT is performed by the Perturbation and Observation
algorithm to obtain the reference voltage corresponding to the
maximum power which is then compared with actual voltage
of the solar panel to generate the Pulse Width Modulated
(PWM) signal that controls the switching operation of buck
boost converter.

Figure 6: Simulation model of hysteresis band controller.

Figure 6 shows the simulation model of hysteresis band

controller which compares the voltage across dc link capacitor
with the reference voltage corresponding to the maximum
power with the voltage across the dc link capacitor to get the
d component of the current and keeping the q component of
current to zero, the reference current is generated after the dq
to abc conversion.
Figure 3: Flowchart showing the overall methodologies of the system.
 D. Modeling of Shunt Active Power filter (SAPF)

Figure 10: Block diagram of shunt active power filter model.

Figure 7: Overall simulation model of grid connected PV – System.
Figure 10 shows block diagram of shunt active power filter
Figure 7 shows the overall simulation model of grid model where the voltage and current from the PV-Micro grid
connected PV system using hysteresis band controller. The is measured and then Clarke’s transformation is performed to
output of PV_MPPT subsystem from figure 5 i.e., the PV is get the instantaneous active and reactive power using PQ
connected to the three phase voltage source inverter using the theory. The dc link voltage is compared to the reference
buck boost converter and MPPT algorithm and then to the grid voltage and the internal loss in the compensator is calculated.
through the L filter. The switch operation of the inverter is Then the instantaneous power is passed through a high pass
controlled by the PWM signal generated using the hysteresis filter and compared with the internal loss to obtain reference
band controller from figure 6. current in alpha beta frame. Finally, inverse Clarke
transformation is performed to convert alpha beta reference
C. Modeling of Micro-hydro plant current to abc frame. The reference current is then compared
with the actual current to generate the gate pulses for the
inverter control using three-phase hysteresis band current
controller. And the simulation model of the shunt active power
filter is shown in figure 11.

Figure 8: Simulation model of micro-hydro plant.

Figure 8 shows the simulation model of micro-hydro plant.

At first the synchronous machine is synchronized controlling
the parameters of the excitation system and then connected to
the load. The surplus power of the plant during the day time is Figure 11: Simulation model of shunt active power filter.
dissipated in the dump load called discrete resistance ELC
(Electronic Load Controller). E. Integration of SAPF in PV-micro hydro grid

Figure 9: Simulation model of ELC.

Figure 12: Block diagram of integration of SAPF in PV-micro hydro grid.
Figure 9 shows the simulation model of ELC based on
discrete resistance mechanism. In this method the actual rotor Figure 12 shows the overall block diagram of integration
speed is compared with the reference speed and then the error of SAPF in PV- micro hydro grid such that the switching
signal is quantized. Finally, according to the error in the speed operation of inverter used in the SAPF is controlled using
the dump load is turned on to maintain the rotor speed at 1pu hysteresis band controller along with PQ theory to inject
according to the error in the speed. current to the AC bus to compensate harmonic current and
reactive power drawn by the non-linear load.
 III. SIMULATION RESULTS
A. Impact of Non-linear load

Figure 16: Output voltage waveform of MHP.

Figure 16 shows the output voltage waveform of MHP and

indicates that the MHP successfully generates 1pu voltage
even at varying load conditions.
Figure 13: Voltage and current waveform of non-linear load.

Figure 13 depicts the voltage and current waveform of

non-linear industrial load which shows that the load draws the
non-sinusoidal current from the pure sinusoidal voltage
source.
B. PV system output

Figure 17: Rotor speed waveform of MHP.

From figure 17, we can observe that the fluctuation in load

doesn’t affect the rotor speed due to the excess power being
dumped in the ELC. In this way the speed control of the MHP
is performed successfully at varying load conditions.
D. Analysis of PV-micro hydro grid without SAPF
Figure 14: Output voltage and power waveform of PV system.

Figure 14 shows the output voltage and power waveform

of the PV system at 1000 W/m2 irradiance. It shows that the
PV delivers the maximum power of 50 KW at corresponding
voltage of 640V verifying that the PV successfully injects the
maximum power to the grid.
C. MHP system output

Figure 18: Output current waveform of PV-micro hydro grid without

SAPF.

Figure 18 shows the output current waveform of the PV-

micro hydro grid without SAPF. Here, we can observe that the
source current supplied by the MHP and PV plant is non-
linear. This can hamper the windings of the generator used in
MHP, as well as the inverter of the PV system.

Figure 15: Output power waveform of MHP.

Total Harmonic Distortion of source current without
SAPF is found to be approximately 7% as shown in figure 19.
Figure 15 depicts the output power waveform of MHP By increasing the non-linear property of the load, it can be
such that the power generated by the MHP is observed to be varied and can be more in practical load.
approximately 50kw.
 Figure 21: THD analysis of source current with SAPF.
Figure 19: THD analysis of source current without SAPF.
From figure 21, it can be seen that the THD of a source
E. Analysis of PV-micro hydro grid with SAPF current delivered by the PV-micro hydro is reduced to 2.96%
nullifying higher order harmonics after integrating SAPF into
the system.
IV. CONCLUSION
An ELC controlled micro hydro is integrated with the PV
system to supply load to both linear and non-linear load. The
non-linear industrial load draws harmonic current and reactive
power from the system leading the source current to be non-
sinusoidal with THD of 7%. After integrating the SAPF into
the system, the reactive power and harmonic current required
for non-linear load can be compensated such that the source
current becomes sinusoidal with reduced THD of 2.96%.
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