Abstract
This paper proposes a new reactive-power compensator composed of a thyristor current-source inverter. The compensator consists of a 6-pulse thyristor bridge, dc reactor, and a commutation circuit. The commutation circuit offers the thyristor bridge to have PWM operation with minimal switching losses. The operation of proposed system was analyzed by computer simulations with EMTP and experimental works with hardware scaled-model. The proposed system would have low cost and easy expansion of operation voltage due to using the conventional thyristors.