Comparative performance of supercapacitor and fuel cell based UPQC

Abstract

In this paper analysis comparative result of a supercapacitor based unified power quality conditioner comparing with a fuel cell based unified power quality conditioner. This work describes the unified power quality conditioner principles and power restoration for balanced or unbalanced voltage sag or swells in a distribution system. This method proposes a typical configuration of unified power quality conditioner that consists of a DC/DC converter supplied by a supercapacitor at the DC link. This analysis used for comparing how the THD will be improved and after injecting current and voltage to UPQC source current and source voltage are sinusoidal. This paper explains the comparative results of UPQC showing performance wise THD of supercapacitor and fuel cell, the harmonic distortion is reduced in fuel cell as compared to supercapacitor. The comparative studies analyse in both the cases fuel cell is better than supercapacitor in power quality parameters as THD and power factor etc. The result analysis shows the THD of supercapacitor and fuel cell, the harmonic distortion is quite reduced in fuel cell as compared to supercapacitor. The operation of the proposed system is modeled and simulated in MATLAB environment using Simulink and Simpower System toolboxes.