Power Quality Improvement in a Steel Plant by an Optimized Shunt Active Power Filter based on Developed P-Q Theory

Nowadays, the issue of power quality is an important parameter for electricity consumers. Nonlinear elements (such as electronic power equipment, electric arc furnaces, high frequency devices, etc.) are the main reason for the problems related to power quality and the creation of harmonics in the network. In this paper, a new method to improve the power quality in a steel plant is presented. A shunt active power filter is used to eliminate current and voltage harmonics of electric arc furnaces in a steel plant in this method. To improve the performance of the shunt active power filter, a new controller based on PID controller and P-Q theory has been proposed. Also, an optimization method based on the modified gray wolf optimization (MGWO) has been used to adjust the control parameters in order to improve the proper performance of the filter and the power quality indices. A 10-bus steel plant, including 6 electric induction furnaces and a shunt active power filter is simulated by MATLAB/Simulink. The analysis of harmonic indices shows the efficiency of the proposed structure to increase the power quality of the power system.