Reactive power compensator with harmonic blocking feature

Abstract

Properties of a reactive power compensator with a harmonic blocking feature that enables the author to reduce the waveform distortion caused by harmonic generating loads are discussed in this paper. The discussed compensator is built of a series filter tuned to the fundamental frequency and a shunt capacitor. Due to voltage resonance, the series filter does not increase the line impedance for the fundamental, but increases this impedance for higher harmonics. Because of this property, such a compensator is termed as a 'harmonic blocking compensator' (HBC) in the paper. The shunt capacitor provides the needed susceptance for reactive power compensation and a low impedance shunt path for current harmonics generated in the load. This paper discusses the design procedure and presents simulation results of the HBC.