Search

Addressing power quality issues in shipboard microgrids (SMs), which are mainly attributable to the increased installation of power converters, has received much attention recently. To this end, static VAR compensators, such as thyristor-switched capacitors and fixed capacitors-thyristor controlled reactors (FCs-TCRs), can be effective solutions. Controlling these compensators, however, is not a trivial task as it involves sophisticated operations, especially estimating the firing angle, which should be carried out based on some nonlinear equations. This article aims to propose the application of some simple yet numerically efficient algorithms based on bisection, Newton–Raphson, false position, and secant methods for estimating the firing angle of the FC-TCR. The effectiveness and robustness of these algorithms are demonstrated via modeling of the FC-TCR with the electrical power system of a practical hybrid ferry under MATLAB/Simulink environment, where the results proved that the enhanced power quality issues respect the IEC standards 61000-4-7/30. Furthermore, an experimental setup consists of a digital signal processor and a programmable source is used to demonstrate that these techniques can be effectively applied in real-time applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a cost-effective compensator to suppress harmonics and compensate the power factor of all-electric shipboard power systems (SPSs). This compensator, which is based on a fixed capacitor-thyristor controlled reactor (FC-TCR), behaves as a low-pass filter and therefore can reject both low and high-order harmonics. Moreover, the FC-TCR compensator is featured by the low switching losses; hence, it can effectively be implemented for low and medium voltage applications. The design of the filter is detailed via equivalent lossy circuits, which exhibit the mechanism of the harmonic mitigation. Furthermore, theoretical analyses and mathematical developments are suggested to enhance the filtering performance. Besides, details of the Fixed-Point iteration technique which is applied to extract the firing angle of the TCR are conducted. A practical SPS is selected to ensure and demonstrate the performance of proposed methodology via thorough simulations under MATLAB/Simulink environment. The obtained results verify the theoretical analyses and confirm the effectiveness of proposed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]