Enhancement of Power Quality with Hybrid Distributed Generation and FACTS Device

Abstract

Renewable energy sources have been expected to be promising alternative energy sources in the future. Renewable energy sources can bring new challenges and problems when connected to the power grid. The basic elements of the PV– wind generating system are the DC–DC Boost Converter and the three-phase inverter whose role is to convert DC into AC having the same amplitude, fre- quency, and phase of the grid, to which it will be connected. Also, the injected power into an electric grid affects the power quality. Consequently, the impact of the integration of renewable power plants into the electric network corresponding to the level of harmonics and its propagation, besides the initial harmonics resulting from the nonlinear loads itself, has been presented in this paper. Firstly, the size of the distributed generators (DG) has been determined using the Salp Swarm algorithm (SSA) in order to improve the voltage profile and reduce the lack of generation. In addition, a techno- economic feasibility study of PV and wind power plant was evaluated using RETScreen program. Secondly, Active Power Filter (APF) has been used for power quality (PQ) improvement, where the controller for APF has been designed to improve the voltage profile and compensate reactive power and harmonics. Optimal parameters of APF (L-C) are determined using particle swarm optimization (PSO) to minimize the total harmonics distortion (THD) in the studied system. Furthermore, a com- prehensive comparison of the photovoltaic and wind generation with a nonlinear load in both cases with and without the APF is presented.