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Design of series active filter for power quality improvement

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DOI: 10.1109/ICECCE.2014.7086639

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 2014 International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Computational Engineering (ICECCE)
Design of Series Active Filter for Power
Quality Improvement
Kalyanapu Pradeep Kumar
P.G scholar, Dept.of EEE
Amrita school of Engineering, Bangalore, India
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam University
pradeep23030@gmail.com
Abstract: The voltage quality is one of the major concerns for
industrial and distribution consumers. In this work, a series active
filter for voltage compensation has been verified using vectorial
power theory for a three-phase system with non-linear load. The
simulation has been designed using MATLAB/Simulink. The
control scheme provides better unbalance voltage compensation
and voltage regulation for three phase system with non-linear loads
which operates in different conditions. The design and simulation
of series active filter performance results were presented in this
paper to show effectiveness of controller.
Key words: Series Active Filter (SAF), Power Quality Improvement
(PQI), Voltage unbalance, Power vectorial theory
I. INTRODUCTION
In the modern electrical distribution system, power
quality is one of the major issues. The power quality can be
analyzed as voltage unbalance, voltage sag and swell, partial or
total loss of one or more phases. The voltage unbalance is
mainly caused due to uneven distribution of single-phase loads
which may continuously changes across a three-phase system.
The lack of quality power can cause loss of production,
damage of equipment or appliances, increased power losses,
interference of communication lines and so forth. The power
system equipment and customer equipment’s such as overhead
and underground cables, transformers and rotating electric
machines, protection systems also affected with poor quality
voltage. Passive filter have been used traditionally for mitigating
the distortion due to harmonic current in industrial power sector
[2].But they have many drawbacks such as resonance problem,
dependency of their performance on the system impedance,
absorption of harmonic current of nonlinear load, which could
lead to further harmonic propagation through the power system
[3].
To overcome of such problems active power filters is
introduced. It has no such drawbacks like passive filter. They
978-1-4799-5748-4/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE
Ilango. K
Assistant professor, Dept.of EEE
Amrita school of Engineering, Bangalore, India
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam university
kilango2002@gmail.com
inject harmonic voltage or current with appropriate magnitudes
and phase angle into the system and cancel harmonics of
nonlinear loads. But it has also some drawbacks like high initial
cost and high power losses due to which it limits there wide
application, especially with high power rating system. The
widespread use of power electronics based equipment has
produced a significant impact on quality of electric power
supply [4-5].
The increasing severity of harmonic pollution in power
networks has attracted the attention of power electronics and
power system engineers to develop dynamic and adjustable
solution to the power quality problems [6]. The unbalanced
voltage can be compensated with use of three-phase series active
filter which regulate the voltage to the desired level.
In this paper design and simulation of a three phase
series active filter for unbalance voltage compensation has been
demonstrated with use of power vectorial theory.
II. BASIC COMPENSATION
PRINCIPLES
Active filters are a perfect alternative to the passive
filters. The active filters are used in a condition where the
harmonic orders change in terms of magnitudes and the phase
angles. In such conditions it is feasible to use the active
elements instead of passive ones in order to provide dynamic
compensation. The active filters are used in nonlinear load
conditions where the harmonics are dependent on the time. Just
like the passive filters, active filters can be connected in either
series or parallel depending on the type of sources which create
harmonics in the power system. The active filters minimize the
effect of harmonic current by using the active power conditions
to produce equal amplitudes of opposite phase there by
cancelling the harmonics that are caused in the nonlinear
78
 2014 International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Computational Engineering (ICECCE)
components and replace the current wave froom the nonlinear
load [7].
The basic compensation principle oof series active
power filter is shown in Fig 1. A voltage source inverter (VSI) is
used as the series active power filter. This is coontrolled so as to
draw or inject a compensating voltage Vc from or to the supply,
such that it cancels voltage harmonics on the lload side i.e. this
active power filter (APF) generates the distorttions opposite to
the supply harmonics [8]. The compensating vooltage injected by
the series active power filter which contains all tthe harmonics, to
make the load voltage purely sinusoidal. Thhis is the basic
principle of series active power filter to elim minate the supply
voltage harmonics.
active power filter. It is con ntrolled to draw/supply a
compensated current from/to the utility,
u such that it eliminates
reactive and harmonic currents of the
t non-linear load. Thus, the
resulting total current drawn fromm the ac mains is sinusoidal.
Ideally, the APF needs to generaate just enough reactive and
harmonic current to compensate the non-linear loads in the line
[9].
The pulses for the series active
a filter is generated with
help of power vectorial theory which corrects and regulate the
unbalance voltage in three-phasee system. Fig.3 shows the
schematic diagram of series activee filter which composed of a
three-phase PWM voltage source inverter which is injecting
compensation voltage through a three separate 1-Ø transformers.
The output of inverter is then connnected to a second order filter
to eliminate the high frequency which
w is caused by the high
switching action of the inverter. Th
he secondary winding of each
transformer is connected in series with
w each phase of the power
supply as shown in Fig.3

Fig.1 Series
active filter

Fig.3 Diagram of proposed

d series active filter

III. CONTROL AL
LGORITHM

The series active filter is one

Fig.2 Basic compensation principle of A
APF
Fig.1 shows the basic compensation principle off the shunt active
power filter. A current Controlled voltagee source PWM
converter with necessary passive componentss is used as an
o type of active filter used
to eliminate the voltage unbalancce and harmonics. Different
types of control methods are used to o control the series filter. The
choice of the control algorithm decides the accuracy and the
speed of response of the filter. In n this paper, power vectorial
theory has been used for voltage unb balance compensation.
The compensation characteristic becomes ideal when
the active filter presents an infin nite impedance, k=∞. In the
mentioned configuration shown in Fig.3, the passive LC filter
connected in parallel with the load is
i turned to eliminate the fifth
harmonics and seventh harmon nics. For the fundamental

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 2014 International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Computational Engineering (ICECCE)
harmonics, the passive filters also must suppply the reactive 1 1 1
power of the load. The active filter must generate a voltage 1 0 (4)
√
proportional to the harmonic component of thee source current, 1
which is calculated by applying the vectoriaal theory of the
electric power. The reference current is calcuulated as follows where va0 is the zero sequence com
mponent and va2 the negative
[13]. sequence component.

Fig.4 shows the control scheme for obtaining the

reference signal .The voltage comp pensation signal is generated
by the PWM inverter. The gain Kv is the turn ratio of the series
transformers, which is applied to the reference signal for the
voltage unbalance. The gain Ki is the proportional constant for
the harmonics of the source currentt; it gets the magnitude of the
impedance for high frequency. Thu us, the inverter must generate
compensation signal as follow as,

Vc = KiIref + KvVref (5)

The gating signals of the inverter are generated by comparing

Fig.4 Control scheme for the series active filter the resultant reference signal with
h the output of the inverter
through a bang-bang control.
iref = il - v (1)

where IV. SIMULATION

N RESULTS

il- current vector of the load and passive filter. The three phase source of 15kVA, 400 V, 50Hz system
supplying to a non-linear load of th
hyristor converter fed RL load
P-average power defined by (R=10.66Ω, L=97mH) is considerred for simulation analysis.
The simulation has been perfo ormed under balanced and
P= . (2) unbalanced source supplying to non n-linear load. Fig.5 shows the
terminal voltage of thyristor fed RL
R load with balanced source
u- Voltage vector before active filter. which becomes distorted and also o unbalanced one. The load
current is shown in Fig.6.
V- Voltage vector of direct sequence.

- Norm of v defined by

= . (3)

T is the fundamental period and “.” denotes thhe dot product of

the vector

The reference voltage to compensaate the voltages

unbalance is obtained by calculating the zeero and inverse
sequence components from equation .The acctive filter must Fig.5 load voltage befo
ore compenation

generate this components, but in reverse phasse. Applying the

inverse of the fortescue transformation, the folllowing equations
are obtained.

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 2014 International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Computational Engineering (ICECCE)

Fig.6 load current befor compenation

n
Fig.9 Unbalanced so
ource voltage
Fig.7 shows the source voltage after voltage com
mpensation using
vectorial power control algorithm. The controoller gives better
results on load side which is shown in Fig.8. From Fig.8, one
can understand for first two cycles controlleer not producing
output properly due to sampling period undeer considered for
calculating the vectorial power.

Fig.10 Load voltage before compensa

ation under unbalanced source
condition
n

Fig.7 Source voltage after compeensation

Fig.11 Load current before compensa

ation under unbalanced source
condition
n

Fig.8 load voltage after compenssation

Fig.12 represents the source voltag
ge after voltage compensation
using vectorial power control algoriithm. Here also the controller
is not providing proper results for only two cycles after that
The simulation performance analysis of series active
controller perform well. Thee terminal voltage after
filter with unbalanced source voltage has been ddone with source
compensation is presented in Fig.13
3.
voltages of Va=230, Vb=160, Vc=160 phasses. The source
voltage with unbalance is shown in Fig.9. The terminal voltage
of thyristor converter fed RL load is shown inn Fig.10 which is
unbalance due to presence of unbalance in source voltage.
Fig.11 illustrates the current drawn by the non-liinear load.

Fig.12 unbalance source volta

age with compensation

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 2014 International Conference on Electronics, Communication and Computational Engineering (ICECCE)
symmetrical components decompossition. The series active filter
can perform better in reduction of voltage
v THD. The simulation
results show a very good performan nce of the proposed algorithm
and it was tested under balanced soource supplying to non-linear
load and also unbalanced source suppplying non-linear load. Both
cases the controller was able to commpensate voltage unbalances
at the load terminals.
Fig.13.Load voltage after compensation under unbalancced source condition
TABLE.I REFEREN
NCES

THD values of the balanced source voltage [1]. A. Von Jouanne, and B. Banerjee, “Asseessment of voltage unbalance,” IEEE
Trans. vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 782-790,20001.
[2]. L. Moran, P. Werlinger, J. Dixon and R.Wallace, “A series active power
Load Conditions %THD filter which compensates current harmonics and voltage unbalance
simultaneously,” Proceeding of the IEEE Conference on Power
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[3]. HadadKevork and GezaJoos, “A fast algorithm for voltage unbalance
VL Without 21.32% compensation and regulation in faulteed distribution systems,” Proceeding
of the IEEE Conference on Applied d Power Electronics and Exposition,
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[4]. J. G.Pinto, R. Pregitzar, L. F. C. Monteeiro, C. Couta and J. L. Afonso, “A
Combined Series Active Filter an nd Passive Filters for Harmonics,
VL With compensation 3.24 % Unbalances and Flicker Compensation,” International Conference on
Power Engineering, Energy and Electtrical Drives, 2007.
VL With passive filters 5.05% [5].A. Ghasemi, and S. S. Mortazavi,“Comprrision of Different Control Strategies
for Robust Shunt Power Active” International Review of Electrical
Engineering, vol. 4, no. 6, November-- December, 2009.
[6]. J. Nastran, R. Cajhen, M. Seliger, and d P. Jereb, “Active power filter for
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TABLE.II 1994.[7]. J. W. Dixon, J. J. Garc´ıa, and L. A. Mor´an, “Control system
for three-phase active power filter which simultaneously compensates
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[8].A.von Jouanne and B. B. Banerjee, “Voltage“ unbalance: Power quality
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[11]. Darwin Rivas, Luis Morán, Juan W. W Dixon and José R. Espinoza,
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[12]. F. Z. Peng and D. J. Adams, “Harmonics sources and filtering approaches,”
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[13]. F. Z. Peng, H. Akagi, A. Nabae, ”A novel harmonic power filter,”in Proc.
IEEE/PESC, April, 1988, pp. 1151-11 159
[14]. J. W. Dixon, G. Venegas and L.A. Moran,M “A series active power filter
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V. CONCLUSION [15]. Z. Wang, Q. Wang, W. Yao and J. Liu, “A series active power filter
adopting hybrid control approach,” IEEE
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16, no. 3, May 2001, pp. 301-310.

The proposed idea is to design, developp of series active

filter with proper control scheme. The controlller has ability to
generate the faster reference compensation volttage signal which
has been presented and analyzed by computaational load and

978-1-4799-5748-4/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE 82

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