Waveform Distortions due to AC/DC Converters Feeding DC Arc Furnaces

The line-commutated converters are cause of significant harmonic distortions in electrical power systems. They can operate as a six-pulse converter or configured in parallel arrangment for high-pulse operation; twelvepulse converters are usually used for DC arc furnaces. The DC arc furnaces can cause timevarying power quality disturbances in the feeding network, mainly waveform distortion and voltage fluctuations. In this paper the problem of the waveform distortion assessment of these important disturbing loads is taken into account. The study is performed using computer simulation based on Power System Blockset, that is a tool of Matlab, and using a chaos-based model for simulating the dc arc.