Analyzing power quality issues in electric arc furnace by modeling

Rapid growth of non-linear loads in distribution network has attracted power system engineers' attention from power quality point of view. Electric arc furnace (EAF) is one of the typical industrial non-linear loads responsible for deteriorating the power quality in the distribution network by introducing harmonics, propagating voltage flicker and causing unbalance in voltages and currents. Therefore, the EAF model is required to be studied and the power quality required to be analyzed in the distribution network. This paper presents a novel time domain EAF model to study power quality problems. The proposed model is a combination of two previous EAF models called-exponential and hyperbolic model-using transition functions. The functioning of the proposed model has been validated by comparing its various performance characteristics with the existing Cassie-Mayr's EAF model and with real measured data available. Current harmonics, voltage harmonics along with voltage flickers are considered as power quality problems for study and analysis. Simulation is carried out in SIMULINK/MATLAB environment.