Facts Controllers

1956 Words4 Pages

ABSTRACT With the ongoing expansion and growth of the electric utility industry, electricity has become a highly engineered product; it is increasingly being considered and handled as a commodity. In the evolving utility environment, financial and market forces are, and will continue to, demand a more optimal and profitable operation of the power system with respect to generation, transmission and distribution. Power electronics based equipment, Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS), provide proven technical solutions to address these new operating challenges being presented today. The potential benefits of the FACTS equipment are now widely recognized by the power systems engineering and T&D communities. This paper focuses on the summary of issues and benefits of applying FACTS controllers to AC power systems. The overall process for the system studies and the analysis associated with the FACTS installation projects and the need for FACTS controller models is also discussed. Finally an introduction to the basic circuits of several FACTS controllers is provided with a focus on their systems performance characteristics. INTRODUCTION FACTS technologies allow for improved transmission system operation with minimal infrastructure investment, environmental impact, and implementation time compared to the construction of new transmission lines. FACTS technologies provide advanced solutions as cost-effective alternatives to new transmission line construction. With respect to FACTS equipment, voltage sourced converter (VSC) technology, which utilizes self-commutated thyristors/transistors such as GTOs, GCTs, IGCTs, and IGBTs, has been successfully applied in a number of installations world-wide for Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOM), Unified Power Flow Controllers (UPFC), Convertible Series Compensators(CSC), back-to-back dc ties (VSC-BTB) and VSC transmission. These aforementioned transmission system installations are in addition to the earlier generation of power electronics systems that utilize line-commutated thyristor technology for Static Var Compensators (SVC) and Thyristor Controlled Series Compensators (TCSC). Although power electronic based equipment is prevalent in each of the three areas, Generation, Transmission, Distribution the focus of this paper is on transmission The limitations of the transmission system can take many forms and may involve power transfer between areas (referred to here as transmission bottlenecks) or within a single area or region (referred to here as a regional constraint) and may include one or more of the following characteristics: Steady-State Power Transfer Limit

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