Assistant research scientist Dr. Morcos Metry presented his paper, co-written with Dr. Wesam Rohouma, titled “Load Characterization Tuning Strategy to Reduce Switching Losses in Power Quality Compensators” at the IEEE Energy Conversion and Congress Exhibition oral presentation session in Nashville, TN on November 2.
This paper improves the capacitorless power quality compensators (CPQC) by achieving longer converter service life through reducing switching losses. While finite control set model predictive control (MPC) achieves high fidelity tracking for multi-objective cost functions, it results in high switching frequency, which increases losses and device stresses, and reduces the overall converter reliability. This paper develops an auto-tuning approach for the MPC weighting factors that minimizes the switching frequency within IEEE harmonics standards, hence reduces switching stresses. The significance of the developed approach is its use of the load characterization of the system bus, to auto-tune the MPC weighting factors during operation.