Abstract
The power sector increasingly focused on addressing the issues of power quality (PQ), owing to the rise of automation in industries and integration of power-electronics-based distributed generation systems. This paper presents the improvement in the method of enhancing the PQ by using Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC) and Distribution Static Compensator (DSTATCOM) and Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) with 12-switch Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) configuration. A novel UPQC system topological design is introduced. Typically, a three phase three wire (3P-3W) UPQC consists of two VSI connected back-to-back. However, in this configuration, six switches belonging to the series inverter are often underutilized. As a solution for this problem, for enhancing semiconductor utilization with reduced overall switch count, a new reduced-switch UPQC topology is proposed in this paper. The proposed design requires only nine switches and retains all performance benefits of conventional 12 -switch UPQC without increasing switch volt-ampere (VA) rating. A comprehensive analytical comparison between the proposed topology and the existing 12 and 9-switch UPQC configurations is provided. Simulated results obtained using MATLAB/Simulink, along with real-time validation on an OPAL-RT platform, confirm that the proposed topology enhances PQ while achieving significant hardware optimization.