MITIGATION OF POWER QUALITY PROBLEMS IN STEEL PLANTS USING STATIC SYNCHRONOUS COMPENSATOR

This paper focuses on mitigating various power quality issues from electric arc furnaces (EAF) in steel plants, including voltage flicker, sag, swell, and harmonics. Arc furnaces are recognized as one of the industry's most nonlinear electrically polluting loads. The proposed solution in this article to address all power quality issues caused by EAF is implementing a flexible power supply strategy known as a static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) for injecting reactive energy into the electrical grid. In this study, an experimental model of EAF is utilized based on real measurements of the variation of arc resistance and arc reactance during the melting phase. The pulse width modulation (PWM) technique is employed for current tracking feedback control to generate the required reactive current. A fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is employed for the DC bus.