Development of a High-Resolution Digital Firing System for Static Var Compensators

Static Var Compensators (SVCs) are electrical installations, which assure the power quality of an electrical network, by providing voltage support, harmonic filtering and reactive power compensation. They are particularly interesting for distribution network of a particle accelerator, since the quality on the network voltage has a direct impact on the particle beam. A controller prototype was realized with standard CERN control crate electronics, with an embedded Digital Signal Processor (DSP) implementing regulation and firing algorithms. The proposed controller architecture addresses solutions to several challenges inherent in an SVC firing system, such as accurate synchronization with the network voltage and high resolution of the firing pulses. Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation results validate the proposed scheme.