Five-Level Cascaded Active Filter for Power Line Conditioners

Karuppanan P, Rajasekar S and Kamala Kanta Mahapatra

Abstract-- This paper presents a five-level cascaded multilevel Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) based shunt active filter for Power Line Conditioners (PLC) to improve power quality. The reference current extraction is based on sensing main currents that are multiplied with estimated peak reference current. The proposed approach comprises Low Pass Filter (LPF) in conjunction with Proportional Integral (PI) controller is used to estimate the peak reference current and maintain the DC-bus capacitor voltage of the inverter nearly constant. The cascaded multilevel active filter switching signals are derived from proposed triangular carrier current modulator; it gives better dynamic performance under transient and steady state operating conditions. The APLC system is validated through extensive simulation under steady state and transient condition with different non-linear loads. These simulation results reveal that the cascaded active filter effetely compensates the current harmonics and reactive volt amperes. Index Terms-- Active Power Line Conditioners (APLC), Proportional (PI) controller, Triangular carrier current controller, Harmonics, Power quality

Recently Active Power Line Conditioners (APLC) or Active Power Filters (APF) overcome these problems and are used for compensating the current-harmonics and suppressing the reactive power simultaneously due to fluctuating loads [4-5]. The controller is the most important part of the APLC and lot of research is being conducted in this area [3-5]. Conventional PI and Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers have been used to estimate the peak reference currents and control the dc-side capacitor voltage of the inverter. Most of the active filter systems use PI-controller for maintaining the dc-side capacitor voltage [6-8]. When the source supplies a non-linear or reactive load, it is expected to supply only the active fundamental component of the load current and the compensator supplies the harmonic/reactive component. The outer capacitor voltage loop will try to maintain the capacitor voltage nearly constant which is also a mandatory condition for the successful operation of the APLC. The Low Pass Filter (LPF) design followed PI-controller is proposed for controlling the capacitor voltage and estimate the required reference current. This paper presents a proportional integral controller based cascaded multilevel shunt active power filter for the harmonics and reactive power mitigation of the non-linear loads. The cascaded multilevel H-bridge active power filters have been widely used for power quality applications due to increase in the number of voltage levels, low switching losses, low electromagnetic compatibility for hybrid-filters and higher order of harmonic elimination. The cascade M-level inverter consists of (M-1)/2 H-bridges and each bridge has separate dc source [9-13]. The cascaded inverter gate switching signals are generated using triangular carrier current modulator; it provides a dynamic performance under transient and steady state operating conditions. The compensation process is based on sensing main currents and multiplies with estimated peak reference current using proportional integral controller by controlling the DC side capacitor voltage of the cascaded inverter. The shunt APLC system is validated through extensive simulation and it is investigated in terms of harmonics and VDC settling time under steady state and transient condition with different non-linear loads.

I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, power quality and custom power have become topics of research interest because of widespread use of nonlinear electronic components such as rectifiers, switched mode power supply, incandescent lighting, motor drives etc.. These non-linear loads result in harmonic or distortion current and reactive power problems [1-2]. The harmonics induce malfunctions in sensitive equipment, overvoltage by resonance, increased heating in the conductors and harmonic voltage drop across the network impedance that affects power factor [3]. Traditionally passive filters have been used to compensate the harmonic distortion and the reactive power; but passive filters are large in size, have aging and tuning problems and resonate with the supply impedance. The Static VAR Compensators (SVCs) have been used for solving these problems, unfortunately some SVCs produce lower-order harmonics themselves and response time of some SVCs may are too long to be acceptable for fast-fluctuating loads.
Karuppanan P and Kamala Kanta Mahapatra, Department of Electronics and Communication, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India769008 (e-mail: karuppanan1982@yahoo.co.in and kkm@nitrkl.ac.in). Rajasekar S, Department of Electrical and Electronics, Pondicherry University, India (e-mail: rajasekarmvec@gmail.com).

II. DESIGN OF SHUNT APLC SYSTEMS Cascaded active filter for power line conditioning system is connected in the distribution network at the point of common coupling through filter inductances and operates in a closed

978-1-4244-8542-0/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

loop. The three phase active power filter comprises of 24power transistors with freewheeling diodes, each phase consist of two-H-bridges in cascaded connection and every H-bridges having a dc capacitor. The shunt APLC system contains a cascaded inverter, RL-filters, a compensation controller (unit current vector with proportional integral controller) and switching signal generator (triangular carrier current controller) as shown in the Fig 1.

two-H-bridges in cascaded method for 5-level output voltage, shown in Fig 2. Each H-bridge is connected a separate dc-side capacitor and it serves as an energy storage elements to supply a real power difference between load and source during the transient period. The capacitor voltage is maintained constant using PI-controller. Each H-bridge can produce three different voltage levels + Vdc, 0, Vdc by four-switching operations. The ac-output of the each H-bridge is connected in series such that the synthesized output voltage waveform is the sum of all the individual H-bridges.
A B

3-phase supply Rs,Ls

Non-sinusoidal Load iLa, iLb, iLc ica,icb,icc RL LL C

vsa, vsb, vsc Cascaded VSI Current Sensor isa, isb, isc 24 Triangular carrier Current Controller Unit current vector isa*,isb*,isc* Reference current generator Fig 1 shunt active power line conditioners system VDC,ref CDC

Cdc

Vdc Sensor

Cdc

Proportional Integral (PI) Controller Fig 2 Design of cascaded multilevel active power filter

The 24-IGBT switching operations are performed using proposed triangular carrier current modulator and harmonics it is achieved by injecting equal but opposite current harmonic components at a point of common coupling.

The three phase supply source is connected to the non-linear load; the instantaneous source current is represented as is (t ) = iL (t ) ic (t ) and the instantaneous source voltage

as vs (t ) = Vm sin t . The nonlinear load current will have a fundamental component and harmonic current components, which can be represented as,

III. PROPOSED CONTROL STRATEGIES The block diagram of the proposed control system is shown in Fig 3; it consists of reference current control strategy using unit current vector with PI-controller and proposed triangular carrier current modulator for switching signals of cascaded multiple voltage source inverter. A) Reference current generator: The source currents are converted into the unit sine current(s) while corresponding phase angles are maintained. The unit current vectors is defined as, ia = sin t , ib = sin(t 1200 ) and ic = sin(t + 1200 ) The amplitude of the sine current is unity (united) in steady state and in the transient condition it may increase or decrease according to the loads; the frequency is in the phase with the source voltages. This unit current multiplied with peak value of estimated reference current by PI controller generates the desired reference current. (2)

i L (t ) =

I
n =1

sin( nt + n )

(1)

If the active power filter provides the total reactive and harmonic power, is (t ) will be in a phase with the utility voltage and will be sinusoidal. At the time, the active filter must provide the compensation current; ic (t ) = iL (t ) is (t ) The Current harmonics is achieved by injecting equal but opposite current distortion components at the point of common coupling, there by canceling the original harmonic and make sinusoidal in the supply source that improving the power quality on the connected power distributed system. Power Converter: A cascaded multilevel active power inverter is constructed by the conventional of H-bridges. The three phase active filter comprises of 24-power transistors and each phase consists of

Vdc,ref

Vdc isa isb isc

Proportional Integral controller

I max
X
isa* isb* isc*

power demand of the non-linear load and losses in the distribution system. The peak reference current multiply with output of unit current vector and has determined the desired reference current. B) Proposed triangular carrier current modulator: The proposed triangular carrier current modulator for active power filter line currents can be executed inorder to generate the switching pattern of the cascaded voltage source inverter. There are various current control methods proposed; but the triangular carrier current control method has the highest rate for cascaded active power filters. These inverters provide features like quick current controllability, the suppression of the harmonics induced due to switching operation; the average switching frequency of each inverter is equal and unconditioned stability. The five-level voltage source inverter systems of the current controller are utilized independently for each phase. Each current controller directly generates the switching signal of the three A, B, C phases. The A-phase actual source current represented as Isa and reference current represent as Isa* as shown in Fig 5, similarly derived the B and C phase currents.

Unit current vector

X X

Proposed Triangular Current controller Switching signals Fig 3 Block diagram of the proposed control strategy

Vdc,ref

KP
LPF

I max
1 0.5 0 0.5

Vdc

KI s
Fig 4 PI Controller block diagram Isa*

G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8

CLK Q

Kp Isa . 0

CLK Q

Figure 4 shows the block diagram of the proposed PI control scheme for the active power filter. The DC side capacitor voltage is sensed and compared with a reference voltage. The error e = Vdc, ref Vdc at the nth sampling instant is used as an input for PI controller. The error signal passes through Butterworth Low Pass Filter (LPF). The LPF filter has cutoff frequency at 50 Hz that can suppress the higher order components and pass only fundamental components. The PI controller estimates the magnitude of peak reference current I max and controls the dc-side capacitor voltage of voltage source inverter. It transferred by the function which is represented as,
H (s) = K P + KI s (3)

CLK Q

0 -0.5

CLK Q

Fig 5 Proposed triangular carrier current controller

Where, [ K P =0.7] is the proportional constant that determines the dynamic response of the DC-bus voltage control and [ K I =23] is the integration constant that determines its settling time. The proportional integral controller is eliminating the steady state error in the DC-bus voltage. The PI controller is estimated the magnitude of peak reference current I max and current I max takes response of the active

To determine the switching frequency by means the error current [desired reference current compare with the actual source current] multiplied the proportional gain (Kp) and compared with triangular carrier signal. The four triangular signals are generated same frequency with different amplitude for cascaded inverter. Thus the switching frequency of the power transistor is equal to the frequency of the triangular carrier signal. Then, the output signal of the comparator is sampled and held D-Latch at a regular interval Ts synchronized with the clock of frequency equal to 1 / Ts . Note that 12-external clock applied to each converter and Ts is set as 30 ns, because each phase in one converter does not overlap other phase. Therefore the harmonic currents are reduced as if the switching frequency was increased. The active power filter suppresses the harmonics caused by the switching operation of the cascaded inverter.

IV. SIMULATION RESULT AND ANALYSIS The performance of the PI-controller based cascaded active power filter is evaluated through extensive simulation using Matlab/Sim power tools in order to model and test the system. The cascaded multilevel voltage source inverter is constructed by the 24-power transistors for 5-level output voltage. Each Hbridge is connected to a separate dc-side capacitor and it serves as energy storage elements to supply a real power difference between load and source during the transient period. The capacitor voltage is maintained constantly using PI-controller. The 24-transistor switching pulses are generated using triangular carrier current modulator. The harmonic compensation is achieved by injecting equal but opposite current harmonic components at point of common coupling. The system parameters values are in table 1.
Table 1 system parameters Parameters Line to line source voltage (Vm) System frequency (f) Source impedance: Source resistor (RS) Source inductor (LS) Non-Linear Load: Diode rectifier Load resistor (RL) Load inductor (LL) Filter: Inductor (LF) Resistor (RF) DC-side capacitance (CDC) Reference voltage (VDC, ref) Power Converter 440 V 50 Hz 1 0.5 mH 6-diode 20 100 mH 1 mH 1 2100 F 150 V 24-IGBTs with diodes (a) Values

100

isaref
80 60 40 20

(b)

-20 -40 -60 -80 -100 0.1

Steady state
0.15 0.2

Transient
0.25 0.3

Steady state
0.35 0.4

Fig.6 Simulation results for PI-controller based cascaded APF (a) source currents before compensation or load current (b) extracted reference current.

The active filter must provide the harmonic current or compensation current as ic (t ) = iL (t ) is (t ) , it is shown in Fig 7(a). Consequently current harmonics is achieved by injecting equal but opposite current harmonic components at the PCC, there by canceling the original distortion and improving the power quality on the connected distributed power system. The simulation result of source current after compensation is presented in Fig 7(b) that indicates the current is sinusoidal. We have additionally achieved power factor correction as shown in Fig 7(c) that result indicate a-phase voltage is inphase with a-phase current. These figures are focused in Aphase only other phases is just phase shifted by 1200
50

ica
40 30 20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 0.1

Steady state
0.15 0.2

Transient
0.25 0.3

Steady state
0.35 0.4

100 80

isa

The diode rectifier load connects the ac-grid and the cascaded active power filter joint in which its parallel at the PCC for inject the current harmonics and compensate the reactive power. The non-linear load consists of 6-diode with RL impedance; it will generate 6-pulse rectifier waveform. The rectifier load current or source current before compensation is shown in Fig 6 (a). The DC-side capacitor voltage is sensed and compared with a reference voltage and it generates the error voltage. The error voltage is used as input for PIcontroller for control the inverter of dc-side capacitor voltage and estimate the magnitude of peak reference current I max . The peak reference current is multiplied with a unit current vector output and its determined the reference current that is shown in fig 6 (b).
100 80 60 40 20

60 40 20

(b) 0
-20 -40 -60 -80 -100 0.1

Steady state
0.15 0.2

Transient
0.25 0.3

Steady state
0.35 0.4

400 300 200 100

Vsa isa

(c)

0 -100 -200 -300 -400 0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Fig 7 PI-controller based cascaded APF Simulations under non-linear load Compensation current (b) Source current after active filter (c) power factor correction

(a)

-20 -40 -60 -80 -100 0 0.05

Steady state
0.1 0.15 0.2

Transient
0.25 0.3

Steady state
0.35 0.4

The DC side capacitors voltage is controlled by proportional integral (PI) controller. The PI-controller maintains the capacitors voltage with small ripple in steady and dynamic

conditions, shown in Fig 8. It serves as an energy storage element to supply a real power to operate three-phase inverter.
200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 -20 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

shown in Fig 10 (b) this evidence proof indicates cascaded active power filter is compensation the harmonics uptown less than 5%.
M agnitude based on "Base Peak" - Param eter 25

DC-Side Capacitor Voltage

20

Steady state Transient

Steady state (a)

15

10

8 10 Order of Harmonic

12

14

16

18

M a gnitud e based o n "B ase P ea k" - P aram eter

Fig 8 the DC side capacitor voltage of the cascaded active filter settling time controlled by PI-controller (b)

25

20

15

The three-phase 6-pulse diode rectifier (non-linear) load current or source current before compensation is shown in Fig 9(a) that indicate the source current is distorted or having harmonic currents. The harmonic compensation is achieved by cascaded active power filter, injecting equal but opposite current harmonic components at PCC. The three-phase source current after compensation is shown in Fig 9(b) this indicates the current is sinusoidal.
100 80 60 40

10

8 10 Order of Harmonic

12

14

16

18

Fig 10 PI-controller based cascaded APF; Order of harmonics (a) the source current without active filter (THD=27.07%), (b) with active power filter(THD=2.59%)

iLa iLb iLc

(a)

20 0 -20 -40 -60 -80 -100 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

The total real (P) and reactive (Q) power calculated under steady state and transient conditions, that is shown in table 2. This result indicates the PI-controller based cascaded active power filter is decomposing the reactive power and improves the power quality. The total harmonic distortion measured from the source current on the distribution system. The proportional integral controller based compensator filter made linear source current to the supply. The total harmonic distortion measured and compared is shown in table 2.
Table 2 various parameters measured without APF and with APF Parameters Source Current(IS) without APF THD 27.07% 9.05 kW 495 VAR Source Current(IS) with APF 2.59% 10.38 kW 318 VAR

100 80 60 40 20

isa isb isc

(b)

0 -20 -40 -60 -80 -100 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4

Real Power (P) Reactive volt Ampere Power (Q) Power factor

Fig 9 PI-controller based cascaded APF Simulation results (a) Source current after active filter (b) Load currents

0.8773

0.9763

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used to measure the order of harmonics with the fundamental frequency 50 Hz at the source. These orders of the harmonics are plotted under steady state conditions in the distribution supply current. The order of the harmonics plotted in Fig 10 (a), without active power filter; it indicate 5th 7th 11th and 17th order of harmonics which is presented and lower order harmonics are absent. The order of the harmonics plotted with active power filter, is

The simulation is done in various non-linear load conditions. The proportional integral control based compensating cascaded active filter made balance responsibility even when the system is non-linear load. FFT analysis of the active filter brings the THD of the source current less than 5% into

adopted with IEEE 519-1992 and IEC 61000-3 standards harmonic under non-linear and/or unbalanced load conditions.

[9]

Rajesh Gupta, Arindam Ghosh, Avinash Joshi Control of cascaded transformer multilevel inverter based DSTATCOM Electric Power Systems Research 77 (2007), pp.989999, 2006

V. CONCLUSION This paper demonstrates that the cascade inverter based active power filter is suitable for power line conditioning of power distribution systems. The cascaded PWM-voltage source inverter provides lower costs, higher performance and higher efficiency for power line conditioning applications. A novel method comprising low pass filter in conjunction with proportional integral control scheme has been adopted for controlling the DC-side capacitor voltage of the cascaded inverter and estimating the required reference current. The APLC system including the proposed control method is validated through extensive simulation under steady state and transient with different non-linear loads. These simulation results reveal that the cascaded active power filter effetely filters the harmonics and compensates reactive volt amperes. The measured total harmonic distortion of the source currents is 2.59% that is in compliance with IEEE 519-1992 and IEC 61000-3 standards for harmonic levels.

[10] Jagdish kumar, Pramod Agarwal, Biswarup Das Implementation of Cascaded Multilevel inverter-based STATCOM IETE Journals of Research, Vol.56(2), Aprl-2010 [11] Keith Corzine and Yakov Familiant A New Cascaded Multilevel H-Bridge Drive- IEEE Trans on power electronics, Vol.17, no.1, Jan-2002 [12] Mariusz Malinowkski, K.Gopakumar, Jose Rodriguez and Marcelo A.Perez A Survey on Cascaded Multilevel Inverters IEEE Trans on Industrial Electronics, Vol.57, No7, July-2010. [13] Zhong Du, Leon M. Tolbert, Burak Ozpineci, and John N. Chiasson Fundamental Frequency Switching Strategies of a Seven-Level Hybrid Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter IEEE Trans on Industrial Electronics, Vol.24, No1, Jan-2009

BIOGRAPHIES
Mr.P.Karuppanan obtained B.E Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai in 2004. He creditably completed his M.E Degree in VLSI Design of Anna University, Chennai in 2007. He is serving the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela, India as a Research Scholar in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering from 2008 onwards. His specialisation id focused on Electronics power quality, Analog and Digital VLSI design.

VI. REFERENCES
[1] Hirofumi Akagi, Akira Nabae and Satoshi Atoh Control Strategy of Active Power Filters Using Multiple Voltage-Source PWM Converters IEEE Trans on Industry Applications, Vol.IA-22, No.3, Pg.460-465, May/June 1982 [2] Fang Zheng Peng, John W. McKeever, and Donald J. Adams A Power Line Conditioner Using Cascade Multilevel Inverters for Distribution Systems IEEE Trans on Industry Applications Vol.34, No.6, Pg. 1293-98, Nov/Dec-1998 [3] S.-J.Huang and J.-C.Wu Design and operation of cascaded active power filters for the reduction of harmonic distortions in a power System IEE Proc.-Gener. Transm. Distrib.. Vol. 146, No. 2,Pg. 193-199, March 1999 [4] Bhim Singh, Kamal Al-Haddad & Ambrish Chandra, A New Control Approach to 3-phase Active Filter for Harmonics and Reactive Power Compensation-IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol. 46, NO. 5, Oct-1999 [5] Brod D.M, Novotny D.M Current control of VSI-PWM Inverter-IEEE Trans on Industry Appl, Vol.21, pp.562-570July/Aug. 1985. [6] Abdelmadjid Chaoui, Jean Paul Gaubert, Fateh Krim, Gerard Champenois PI Controlled Three-phase Shunt Active Power Filter for Power Quality Improvement- Electric Power Components and Systems, 35:13311344, 2007 [7] Ahmed M. Massoud, Stephen J. Finney, Andrew J. Cruden, and Barry W. Williams Three-Phase, Three-Wire, Five-Level Cascaded Shunt Active Filter for Power Conditioning, Using Two Different Space Vector Modulation Techniques IEEE Trans on Power Delivery Vol.22, N0.4, Pg.2349-61, Oct-2007 [8] Helder J. Azevedo, Jose M. Ferreira, Antonio P. Martins, Adriano S. Carvalho An Active Power Filter with Direct Current Control for Power Quality Conditioning Electric Power Components and Systems, Taylor & Francis, Pg. 587-601, 36:6, 587 601, 2008

Kamala kanta Mahapatra received B.Tech degree with Honours in 1985 from University of Calicut, Masters in 1989 from Sambalpur University and Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in the year 2000 in Electrical Engineering .Currently, he is a Professor in the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of National Institute of Technology Rourkela; he assumed this position since February 2004. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India), His research interest includes Power Electronics, Embedded Systems, Electronic Circuits, FPGA based System design and VLSI Design.

S.RAJASEKAR received his B.Tech degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering, M.Tech in Electrical Drives & Control from Pondicherry University. His areas of interests are Power electronics converters, Power quality issues and Application of Power electronics in Power system. Presently he is Research Scholar at Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry