Analysis of three-phase parallel active power filter operation mode with arc furnace active power’s fluctuations

An electrical arc furnace is the most widely used technological equipment within metallurgical industry. However, the arc furnace is characterized by the pronounced stochastic operation mode. The arc forming process in the arc furnace (which is accompanied by generation of reactive power, higher harmonics, emergence of asymmetry of currents into the power supply network) leads to reactive and active power's fluctuations. Traditional compensating devices (condenser batteries, power passive filters, synchronous compensators) have insufficient operation speed to react in time to the sharply variable operation mode of the arc furnace. One of the latest advance in the reactive power compensation is the use of active power filters. They exclude the possibility of electrical resonance arising, as well as they timely react to change the load during their acting. In frame of this work the model of the arc furnace with the three-phase active power filter (using the visual modeling environment) was synthesized. The primary side's parameters of the arc furnace transformer's equivalent circuit were referred to its secondary side. In frame of this work the furnace's active and reactive power consumption data and appropriate total harmonics distortion values was obtained for both the load and the power network currents. The oscilloscope waveforms of the power network's current and voltage, power active filter 's and load's currents and the spectral diagram of the higher harmonics of load's and the power network's currents were obtained. The presented conclusion is based on the analysis of obtained data.