Evaluation of performance of AC drive under unbalanced voltage conditions and AC line reactor harmonic mitigation performance at various loading conditions

Power quality problems are becoming a major cause of concern due to wide spread use of various non-linear loads used in industries. Out of various power quality problems, voltage sag and short interruptions is one of the major problems responsible for mal-operation of adjustable speed AC drives in Indian Industries. Majority of industrial customers are using adjustable speed AC drives on large scales because of their various advantages like energy saving and implementation of Energy Conservation Act 2001 will result into sudden increase of use of AC drives. Less amount of work is reported in published literatures on effect of unbalance voltage on the performance of variable speed AC drives and input AC line reactor harmonic mitigation performance at various loading conditions in case of PWM drive. Extensive laboratory tests are conducted to study the effect of voltage unbalance factor at various loading conditions on various parameters of the drive and conclusion is presented with results in this paper.