Sliding Mode Control Based STATCOM

At present, power system networks are saturated with non-linear, asymmetric electrical receivers. It leads to a decrease in the power quality at the points of common coupling. A promising device serving to improve the power quality is a static reactive power compensator (STATCOM). Operational efficiency of STATCOM is largely determined by the control method. Methods of pulse-width modulation (PWM) have become widespread. However, when operating on a sharply variable load, the changes of which occur randomly and within wide limits, it is problematic to ensure the high quality of STATCOM operation by means of PWM without additional measures. To solve this problem, one can use sliding mode control. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to assess the efficiency of STATCOM with sliding mode control in the task of ensuring the proper power quality. The article shows the synthesis of sliding mode control by the STATCOM voltage contour. The modeling of its operation with the nonlinear asymmetric load and with non-sinusoidal form of the voltage of the primary power supply has been performed. The modeling has been carried out in the MATLAB application program package. The simulation modeling results presented in the article demonstrate the ability of the STATCOM mentioned above to provide radically high quality of voltage at the points of connection to the network and exclusion of all inactive components of the power consumed from the network.