Compensação de reativos em ambientes senoidais e distorcidos

Abstract

The subject of reactive power compensation in electrical systems is widely disseminated and employed because, among the main benefits derived from its application, it provides the reduction of electrical losses, the improvement of the voltage profile and, in the financial aspect, avoids the charging by low power factor in electrical installations. Among the wide range of mitigating equipment, the capacitor banks represent the most trivial solution when it is desired to provide reactive power compensation in commercial and industrial systems. However, with the expansion of the penetration of non-linear charges at all levels in electrical systems, the need for reactive power compensation is, in many situations, accompanied by the requirement to mitigate harmonic components. In environments with distortion of voltage and current waveforms, the resonances resulting from the insertion of pure capacitor banks can coincide with the harmonic frequencies of characteristic currents and cause amplification of the distortions initially existing, which inevitably contributes to power quality deterioration of the system. In this sense, the present study aims to analyze the main equipment destined to the compensation of reactive power in senoidal systems and in distorted systems, situation in which the correction of the power factor and attenuation of the harmonic content are required concomitantly. With the aim of evaluating reactive power compensation in an industrial environment with non-linear load penetration, case studies are presented through computer simulations, contemplating the insertion of capacitor banks and passive harmonic filters. The studies include the harmonic analysis of the system and the technical evaluation of the performance of the mitigating devices, both in the form of capacitors and through harmonic filters, in order to verify the performance of the compensation system employed.