Comparative study of semiconductor power losses between CSI-based STATCOM and VSI-based STATCOM, both used for unbalance compensation

In this paper, we present a detailed procedure to determine the semiconductor losses for both structures of a shunt STATCOM (Static Compensator), STATCOM based on Current Source Inverter (CSI) and STATCOM based on Voltage Source Inverter (VSI), both used for voltage unbalance compensation. As a first step, we study the VSI-based STATCOM and the CSI-based STATCOM used in high speed railway substations. Then we analyze the design and the sizing of the unbalance compensator in order to obtain an unbalance factor that does not exceed the limits imposed by the standards or by the energy provider. Following that, we compare the performances obtained with both structures VSI-STATCOM and CSI-STATCOM, after calculating the semiconductor power losses in the STATCOM converters. Finally, we validate our approach by simulation over real data of unbalance compensation caused by the new high-speed railway in Morocco. We use the tools MATLAB / Simulink/Simpowersys for performing our simulations.