Electric Arc furnaces: Chaotic Load Models and Transient Analysis

Electric arc furnaces (EAFs) are a main cause of voltage flicker due to the interaction of the high demand currents of the load with the supply system impedance. The stochastic models have described the physical phenomena of EAFs. An alternative approach is to include deterministic chaos in the characterization of the arc currents. In this paper, a chaotic approach to such modeling is described and justified. At the same time, a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) module, which is a FORTRAN interface with TACS (Transient Analysis of Control Systems), is developed to implement the chaotic load model in the Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP). The details of the module and the results of tests performed on the module to verify the model and to illustrate its capabilities are presented in this paper.