Harmonic mitigation in AC motor using multi-pulse rectifier

Abstract

Now-a-days, sustainability of power quality is a major concern. Speed control of an AC motor is required for several industrial applications, but is often difficult to achieve as the AC motor runs at fixed speed. Hence, power electronic devices are introduced in the system. Due to the development in power electronic devices with improved dependability and cheaper cost, results in the growth of modern variable frequency drive (VFD) which can control the speed of an induction motor by adjusting the frequency of the machine [8]. They produce harmonic components and distort the supply mains, which in turn adversely affect the power quality. To outlive the difficulty, a technique named multi-pulse rectifier is developed. The main objective of this work is to reduce the impact of harmonic distortion using variable frequency drives (VFDs). Modeling, simulation and performance analysis of VFD is done based on Total harmonic distortion (THD) [8]. The proposed topology deals with the THD comparison for 6, 12 and 24 pulses. All the simulations are carried out in MATLAB/Simulink.