The growing consumer demand on electrical energy sources every day and the aging transmission and distribution power grid infrastructure is causing new challenges for electrical engineers. In recent years, the focus of power system engineers and consumers has been shifted to “power quality” due to increased usage of voltage sensitive equipment such as computers, servers, network infrastructure and precision electronic manufacturing equipment by consumers. The variations in bus voltage mainly occur due to electromagnetic transients, harmonic distortion, voltage sag, voltage swell and flicker due to switching of large capacitor banks in power grid. In addition, recently there have been numerous small to mid-size installations of renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and wind power generation which are connected to the grid at the distribution side. The nature of these renewable energy sources is that they produce intermittent power generation based on solar and wind energy availability and their high penetration poses problems of voltage and frequency instability in the grid. Another cause of poor power quality is that load demand is not predictable and consumption or daily behaviour of load patterns is not known, hence there is difficulty in matching the demand and supply of power. Demand side management helps energy providers to reduce the peak load demand and adjust the load profile to a certain extent. In this paper, several latest publications related to the improvement of power quality such as passive and active filters, Active Power Line Conditioning (APLC), static VAR compensation, electric spring and smart loads are reviewed. Also various methods of demand side management such as estimation of load patterns, peak clipping, valley filling, intelligent load switching, electric spring and smart loads for reducing the peak demand on utilities are discussed. Proposed work in this area includes development of new topologies and control methodologies of electric spring to get fast response to the changing load and maintain grid stability. Another area of proposed work includes development of algorithms for accurate estimation of demand load patterns so as to reduce the peak load demand on the system.
Volume 12 | Issue 2
Pages: 1306-1312
DOI: 10.5373/JARDCS/V12I2/S20201167