Developing static reactive power compensators in a power system simulator for power education

This paper describes a newly installed laboratory module microcomputer-based static reactive power compensator (SVC) in detail to teach students how an SVC affects system voltage, load balancing, power factor, and transmission line losses. The SVC is merged into an old power system simulator for extensive power engineering education. The structure of the SVC is thyristor controlled reactors with fixed capacitors (TCR-FC). Two control algorithms, feedback control and feedforward control, are developed and compared. For the purpose of program flexibility and portability, a VME-Bus based microcomputer is used to synthesize the controller of the SVC. Several suggested experiments are given to show the effects of the SVC on distribution system compensation. The SVC greatly promotes the performance of the power system simulator.