Document Type

Article

Rights

This item is available under a Creative Commons License for non-commercial use only

Disciplines

Electrical and electronic engineering

Publication Details

IET Power Electronic, Vol.3, 4, pp.542-551,2010. DOI:10.1049/iet-pel.2009.0111

Abstract

This study presents a protection scheme for protecting the series inverter of a unified power quality conditioner (UPQC). The proposed scheme protects the series inverter from overcurrents and overvoltages, which appear during short-circuit faults on the load side of the UPQC. The main protection element is a crowbar connected across the secondary of the series transformer and consists of a pair of antiparallel connected thyristors, which is governed by a simple Zener diode-based control circuit. In the case of an overvoltage, the crowbar short circuits the secondary of the transformer, thus removing the overvoltage and diverting the fault current from the series inverter. An additional circuit is used to disable the inverters in overcurrent conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed protection scheme is demonstrated both through simulation and experimentation.