A control system for dc arc furnaces for power quality improvements

The dc arc furnaces are highly disturbing loads for transmission and distribution networks. The present paper proposes and implements an ac–dc converter control system for power quality improvements taking into account both flicker levels and harmonics at the point of common coupling. Different set of parameters for the proportional–integral controller are investigated for optimizing the dc arc furnace power quality impact on the ac network. In this study both deterministic and random models of the arc furnace are considered together with different structures of the ac–dc converter unit. The proposed control system is tested on a real case application.