Advanced Physical Research

The research works devoted to the study of the problem of determining power losses in high-voltage electric networks with non-linear loads are considered, provides expressions for determining the power losses of the main network elements in a non-sinusoidal mode, and presents the results of experiments at a high-voltage substation feeding electric arc furnaces. The results of high-precision measurements of changes in active and reactive power at both ends of the power transmission line, as well as the load current of such a furnace connected to the high-voltage network through a transformer under various operating modes of the arc furnace are presented. It is shown that electric arc furnaces are very large loads with high non-linearity, which causes high power losses in the network, especially on power transmission lines and transformers. One of the effective ways to reduce such losses is to use reactive power compensators to compensate for non-linearity (reactive component of current), which is achieved by connecting capacitor banks to the lines. At the same time, this approach in combination with the calculation and correction of the systematic error of active power allows to increase the accuracy of electricity metering.