Power quality improvement of radial feeders using an efficient method

•The concurrent use of FCL and DVR for voltage sag compensation of radial distribution feeders is investigated.•FCL substantially restricts the depth of the voltage sag and phase angle jump at the PCC in case of fault occurrence.•With the proposed method, a cost-effective power quality level is assured for different types of the loads.•The simultaneous use of the FCL and DVR gives increased flexibility to the system design and control.•The simulation and experimental results and cost analysis on IEEE standard distribution feeder are presented. In this paper, a voltage sag compensation of Point of Common Coupling (PCC) is provided using a suitable hybrid scheme composed of a Fault Current Limiter (FCL) and a Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). Current limiting task is devolved to the FCL, which has a very simple structure, along with a fast and reliable performance, low on-state losses, and low cost. The FCL not only can preserve the short-circuit level of the Distributed Generation grid (DG-grid) in a safe level, but also compensates the voltage sag for the sensitive loads connected to the PCC. The PCC feeders are classified into high-sensitive, low-sensitive, and non-sensitive feeders. In this paper, by profiting from the collaboration of the FCL and DVR in non-sensitive and high-sensitive feeders, respectively, a suitable compensation with minimum cost is suggested. The proposed compensation scheme mitigates the voltage sag and phase angle jump at the PCC. Using this strategy, a cost-effective desirable power quality for the whole loads is assured. Analytical study supported by simulation and experimental results are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid technique.