Passive Harmonic Filter Design Considering Voltage Sag Performance-Applicable to Large Industries

Nowadays, nonlinear loads such as load commutated inverter (LCI) drives are being used by industrial sector throughout the world. However, despite the LCI drive uses low-cost thyristors and their corresponding controllers, which have high efficiency and low manufacturing cost, there are concerns regarding the use of LCI drives which are two-fold: (i) they generate harmonics and (ii) they are sensitive to voltage sags occurring at their PCC. In the literature, passive harmonic filters have been suggested to address the former concern and therefore various filter designing techniques have been introduced. However, the need to elaborate a cost-effective filter to address both concerns regarding LCI drive operation has been neglected. Therefore, this paper presents an innovative approach for designing passive filters which can decrease the harmonic distortions generated by LCI drives while ensuring more reliable annual operation of these equipment. Besides, other aspects of passive filter designing, such as eliminating detuning effects, resonance elimination and harmonic loading of capacitors, have been taken into account to provide a general and practical filter designing approach for real industrial applications. In order to evaluate the innovative proposed approach, a passive filter is designed for LCI drive used in an Iranian large copper mine company.