02-04-2010, 03:16 PM
ABSTRACT
The power quality is a term used to broadly encompass the entire scope of interaction among electrical suppliers, the environment, the system and products energized, and the uses of those systems and products. It is more than the delivery of clean electric power that compile with industry standards. It involves the maintainability of that power, the design, the selection, and the installation every piece of hardware and software in the electrical energy system. Stretching from the generation plant to the utility customer, power quality is a measure of how the elements affect system as a whole.
This paper presents an overview of electric power quality with special emphasis on power quality problems, its adverse impacts on utilities and customers and the mitigation techniques. The wide spread usage of power electronic loads aimed at enhancement of energy efficiency and productivity has resulted in serious power quality problems such as voltage distortion due to current harmonics, flicker, voltage sag, voltage surges etc., which call for assessment and solution techniques. Here, we also discuss about two major power quality issues “grounding and harmonics and some power system components, which correct the harmonics problems. This paper broadly describes the above features along with the means for improvement of power quality.