Synchronous compensation versus capacitive compensation for reactive power in industrial systems subjected to harmonic distortion

This paper performs a comparative analysis between two types of reactive compensation in typical industrial systems: by capacitors banks (capacitive compensation) and synchronous machine (synchronous compensation). For the tests a busbar subjected to harmonic distortion and with a low power factor is implemented. The results show equivalent compensation for both cases, however synchronous machine presents advantage by mitigating harmonic distortion, mainly the high frequency components.