Analysis of Harmonic Mitigations using Hybrid

Passive Filters
Dinesh Kumar, Firuz Zare
Global Research & Development Center
Danfoss Power Electronics A/S
Denmark
Email ID: dinesh@danfoss.com

Abstract With the recent development in the power electronic
devices, the use of power electronics in controlled Variable Speed
Drives (VSD) is increasing in industrial and domestic
applications. These controlled VSDs provide many advantages
and flexibility in those applications, but at same time cause
harmonic distortion in the power system. In recent years,
significant attention has been focused on line side harmonics
because they overload power network infrastructure, affect
quality of the grid, cause reliability problem in equipment and
waste energy. Therefore mitigations of harmonics have been
considered as important research issues in power system.
A growing number of different harmonic mitigation techniques
are available using active and passive components. In various
industrial applications, passive harmonic mitigation techniques
are used in low power drives due to the cost and size point of
view. In this paper, a comparative analysis has been performed
for various configurations of passive components and finally a
hybrid passive filter has been optimized for the harmonic
mitigation. In some applications such as micro-grid or stand-
alone grid, there are strict requirements for Total Harmonic
Distortion (THD) of voltage at the Point of Common Coupling
(PCC). Therefore, a new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) has been
defined to calculate the THD
V
based on current harmonics.
Index TermsTotal Harmonic Distortion (THD), Variable
Speed Drives (VSD), Point of Common Coupling (PCC), AC
choke and DC choke.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, a significant development in power
electronic devices has been reported and the cost of these
devices has been fallen due to increase in demand and
presence of many competitors in the market. The power
electronic equipment have significant contribution in energy
saving and more efficient use of electricity and, also the power
handling capacity of modern power electronics devices such
as power diodes, SCR and IGBT are very large. Therefore,
such power devices are widely used in power converters,
variable speed motor drives and computers etc. However, the
operation of these power electronic devices causes a non-
sinusoidal current taken from the power source. These non-
sinusoidal current waveforms consist of fundamental wave
and its integer multiples which are known as harmonics.
Increasing the use of non-linear industrial and commercial
loads such as power converters and variable speed motor
drives in various industrial pumps, air-conditioning and
compressor drives is keeping high harmonic distortion in
distribution network. This problem became more serious when
a large number of industrial converters and variable speed
drives generating significant distortion at the Point of
Common Coupling (PCC), where other users are also
connected to the network [1]. This harmonic distortion causes
unnecessary heat in the equipment connected to the harmonic
source, overloading of neutrals, overheating of transformers,
nuisance tripping of circuit breakers and over-stressing of
power factor correction capacitors [2]. Therefore, a strict
requirement on power quality has been employed to limit the
distortion level at the PCC. The various harmonic standards
like IEC 61000-3-2, IEC 61000-3-12 and IEEE-519 describe
the limit on individual non-linear loads. To comply with these
standards while utilizing power converters, VSDs and other
non-linear loads, the need of harmonic mitigation techniques
became very important.
Various harmonic mitigation techniques have been reported
to improve the input current waveforms. A classification of
the various available harmonic mitigation techniques are
presented below:

- Passive techniques
- Multi-pulse rectifier techniques
- Active harmonic cancellation techniques
In the passive filter techniques, the flow of unidirectional
harmonic currents may be prevented in the system by
diverting the harmonic current flow through a low impedance
path, like using tuned filter [3]. Passive filters are cost
effective and can provide an acceptable current harmonic
cancellation, however they have the following drawback:

Bulky and heavy
Performance depends on load
Can introduce resonance in the power system
Can only be tuned to effectively cancel a single
harmonic

Therefore, multiple filters have to be installed in order to
eliminate more than one harmonic [4].
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Multi-pulse rectifier techniques are based on harmonic
cancellation principle through phase shifting and are the
preferred solution to eliminate harmonics in high power
converters like in large motor drive applications and HVDC
transmission systems [5]-[6]. However, they required bulky
and expensive phase shifting transformers and are mostly used
in combination with passive filters to eliminate the rest of the
harmonics that multi-pulse rectifiers are not able to cancel out
[7].
Active harmonic cancellation techniques based on power
electronics approaches where hard switching semiconductors
devices are used, provide better harmonic cancellation
performance compare to other techniques. The most
commonly used active techniques are Active Front End (AFE)
and Active Harmonics Filter (AHF). An AFE allows an AC
drive to take current from the line which is very close to a
pure sine wave with possibility of regeneration [8]. However,
the AFE has more losses compared to six-pulse drive and also
can be an expensive solution for low power applications.
AHF or also called as active power filter (APF) based on
the principle where switching semiconductor devices are in
control in such a manner to inject equal and opposite
harmonics into the power system to cancel harmonics
generated by other loads [9]-[11]. APF, are usually classified
in the way they are connected to electric systems and are
divided as shunt APF and series APF [11]. APF offer higher
flexibility, higher performance and better reliability. However,
the APF results higher losses and more expensive solutions.
Recently various literatures have been reported with slim
DC-link drive, where electrolytic DC-link capacitor has been
replaced by film capacitor as one of harmonic mitigation
technique [12]. Due to the small capacitance, the input current
harmonic contents can be reduced considerably. However
most recent research shown that at a system level where
numbers of drives are connected at PCC, reduced DC-link
capacitance drives give the worst harmonic performance
compare to conventional DC-link capacitor drives [13].
In many low power industrial applications, AC choke or
DC choke is still much attractive solutions compare to other
solutions discussed above. Therefore, this paper focused on
the harmonic mitigation techniques based on passive
components (AC choke and DC choke) and finally proposed
an optimal solution to reduce the total harmonic distortion on
voltage at the PCC.

II. NEW HARMONIC FACTOR TO CALCULATE THD
V

Distortion in voltage and current waveforms is defined by
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), which is an important
index widely used to describe power quality issue in
transmission and distribution systems.
THD presents the contribution of every individual harmonic
component of the signal. The definition of THD for voltage
and current signals is as follows [14]:


2
40
2
(1)
1
h
V
V
h
THD
V

=
=

2
1
40
2
(2)
h
I
I
h
THD
I

=
=
Where h is the harmonic order.
A harmonic-producing load can affect the neighboring
sensitive loads if significant voltage distortion is caused. This
voltage distortion caused by the harmonic- producing load is a
function of both the system impedance and the amount of
harmonic current injected. If the system impedance is low, the
voltage distortion is usually negligible in the absence of
harmonic resonance [15].
Assessing or measuring the system (or grid) impedance is
a very complex and difficult task. On the other hand, without
knowing system impedance, it is very difficult to analyze the
performance of harmonic filter for line voltage distortion.
Therefore, in this paper a new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) has
been proposed to calculate the THD
V
based on current
harmonics. The main benefit of K
i_new
is that on the basis of
only current harmonic information, it is possible to predict and
compare the THD
V
performance of various harmonic filters.
A mathematical expression has been developed to
determine the new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) by using currents
harmonics. For this a diode rectifier with a very large DC
choke has been used shown in Fig. 1(a) with an assumption
that the current through the DC choke has no harmonics.

Ldc
Cdc
RLoad
Iac
(a)
(b)
t
Lg Vs
PCC

Fig. 1: (a) Diode rectifier with a very large DC choke and (b) almost smooth
AC-line current

The AC-line current will be square wave shape as shown
in Fig. 1(b) and its harmonics can be defined as follows:

The RMS value of line current at fundamental frequency is:
1
6
dc
I
I
t
=
16th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference and Exposition Antalya, Turkey 21-24 Sept 2014
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The RMS value of the h
th
harmonic line current is:
6
dc
h
I
I
ht
=
Therefore, THD
I
will be almost constant for different load
profiles:

2
1
40
2
h
I
I
h
THD
I

=
=

2 2 2
1 1 1
30% (3)
5 7 11
I
THD
| | | | | |
= + + + ~
| | |
\ . \ . \ .


From equation (1), THD
V
is defined as:
( )
1
40
2
2
h
V
V
h
THD
V

=
=
Voltage harmonics (V
h
) is the function of grid impedance (L
g
)
and harmonic currents (I
h
). Therefore, THD
V
can be rewrite as
follow:
( )
( )
( )
1 1
40 40
2 2
. . .
2 2
g h h
V g
h L I h I
h h
THD L
V V
e
e

= =
= =

Therefore, calculated THD
V
can be expressed as:
( )
v_cal _
1
(4)
i new
g
L
THD K
V
e
=
Where K
i_new
is the new harmonic factor and defined as:
( )
_
40
2
. (5)
2
h i new
K h I
h
=
=

Equation (4) shows that THD
V
can be calculated by using
the harmonic currents and grid impedance. In order to verify
the calculated THD
V
(THD
V_cal
), a case study has been
performed in section III to compare the calculated THD
V
with
actual THD
V
.
III. PASSIVE HARMONIC MITIGATION TECHNIQUES
One of the aims of this paper is to analyze the harmonic
performance of various harmonic mitigation techniques based
on passive components especially AC choke and DC choke.
Therefore, first part of this section will give the brief
description of AC choke and DC choke based harmonic
mitigation technique with all pro and cons. Then a comparative
harmonic analysis has been performed for both techniques. The
harmonic performance of both techniques is compared for new
harmonic factor (K
i_new
), which can be used to calculate the
THD
V
. Therefore, before implementing the comparative
analysis of both techniques, a case study has been performed to
verify the calculated THD
V
by using K
i_new
against the actual
THD
V
.

A. AC Choke
AC chokes electrically separate the DC bus voltage from
the AC source. Therefore, the AC source is not clamped to the
DC bus voltage during diode conductions in the rectifier. This
feature helps to reduce the flat topping of AC voltage
waveform caused by many VSDs when operate with a weak
grid. At the same time a line inductor of AC choke helps to
damp transient surges in the line due to lightning.
However, the line inductor causes overlap in conduction
between incoming diode and outgoing diode in a three-phase
diode rectifier. This overlap phenomenon reduces the average
DC bus voltage (V
dc
) and the amount of voltage reduction
depends on the duration of the overlap angle () as given in
following equation (6)[16]-[17]:

3. 2. .cos( )
(6)
L L
dc
V
V
o
t

=

Where, V
L-L
is the line-to-line supply voltage, measured
just before the three-phase rectifier.
From equation (6) it is clear that the overlap angle
contributes to the reduction in the average DC bus voltage and
it depends on the value of AC choke inductance. Therefore, a
proper value of the choke inductance should be considered in
order to avoid the low voltage situation at the input terminal of
the drive.

B. DC Choke
DC chokes electrically present after the diode rectifier and
therefore will not contribute anyway to the overlap in diode
commutations and there is no voltage drop in average DC bus
voltage.
The DC choke can increase the diode conduction duration
in rectifier system. There is a critical DC choke inductance
value, which results in completing 60
0
or 120
0
conduction of a
diode pair in three-phase diode rectifier. So any value of DC
choke higher than this critical value will not give any
significant benefits. However, a large DC choke inductance
will help to reduce the DC bus ripple but at same time will
result in extra voltage drop due to the higher winding
resistance. Therefore, a care should be considered while
selecting a critical DC choke inductance to achieve complete
60
0
or 120
0
conduction.
The critical value of inductance for DC choke can be
described in equation (7) [16]-[17]:

( ) 3
6
. (7)
m cr
dc
T
L V
I
t
t

=

16th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference and Exposition Antalya, Turkey 21-24 Sept 2014
PEMC 2014 1133
Where, T is the period of the input AC supply and I
dc
is the
load current.
Equation (7) shows that the critical inductance of the DC
choke depends on the peak line-to-line voltage (V
m)
, load
condition and frequency of input AC supply.
A large AC choke will help to shape the input current close
to a sine wave due to commutation between two phases. On
the other hand a very large DC choke will help to shape the
input current close to a square wave. Therefore, a comparative
harmonic performance has been performed for both AC choke
and DC choke at the end of this section.

C. Verification of calculated THD
V

In this paper to compare the THD
V
performance of AC
choke and DC choke based passive filter, harmonic factor
K
i_new
is used to calculate the THD
V
as discussed in section II.
Therefore, it is important to first verify that the calculated
THD
V
is close to actual THD
V
and can be used for further
analysis.
For this analysis single drive model configuration shown
Fig. 2 has been used. The drive is characterized by having a
three-phase diode bridge rectifier at the line side, a DC-link
capacitor and a standard two-level voltage source inverter on
the motor side. The system impedances under consideration
are the transformer impedance and the grid impedance. The
grid is modeled as an ideal three-phase voltage source (V
s
) of
440V at 60Hz and a grid inductance (L
g
) is 76.61H. The
transformer is modeled as an ideal, with no magnetic
saturation and having a series inductance (L
t
) is 22.8H.

(a)


(b)

Fig. 2: Drives with (a) only AC choke, (b) only DC choke

The voltage and current harmonics are captured at the
PCC. Harmonic factor (K
i_new
)

is calculated by using the
current harmonic as per equation (5). Then THD
V
is
calculated by using equation (4), which is represented as
calculated THD
V
(THD
V_cal
). On the other hand, voltage
harmonic captured at PCC is used to find the THD
V
which is
represented as an actual THD
V
(THD
V_act
) in this paper.
A number of analyses have been performed using drive
model shown in Fig. 2(a) to calculate the harmonic factor
(K
i_new
) by using the current harmonic at different power level
as shown in Fig. 3. Then K
i_new
is used to calculate the THDV
(THD
V_cal
) at respective power level as shown in Fig. 4. At the
same time THD
V_act
is measured at the PCC by using the
harmonic voltage, which is very close to the THD
V_cal
as
shown in Fig. 4. Therefore, new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) can
be used for THD
V
performance analysis for various harmonic
filters.


Fig. 3: A new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) at different power level


Fig. 4: Comparisions of calculated and actual THDv

D. Harmonic performance comparison

In order to compare the AC choke and the DC choke,
several simulations have been carried out for the single drive
model and results are shown in Fig. 5. This analysis show that
even a small AC choke can give better THD
V
performance
compare to the large DC choke. Also, a very large DC choke
like 3.0mH will not give any significant change in THD
V

compare to 2.0mH DC choke. Therefore, the AC choke is
better choice compare to the DC choke. However, even a very
large AC choke alone also will not give any significant
improvement in THD
V
performance as shown in Fig. 6, where
there is no significant improvement in THD
V
even if the AC
choke size increases from 2.0mH to 3.0mH.
It means following two conclusions can be drawn from
this analysis:

- AC choke gives better THD
V
performance compare
to DC choke at all power level
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PEMC 2014 1134
- A very large AC choke alone will not give any
significant improvement in THD
V
performance and
on the other hand a large AC choke will result
significant reduction in average DC bus voltage.

In order to overcome the above limitation and still full-fill
the THD
V
requirement, a hybrid passive filter has been
proposed in next section.


Fig. 5: Harmonic performances of a drive with 1.5mH AC choke versus
various DC choke at different power levels


Fig. 6: Harmonic performance of a drive with various AC chokes at different
power levels

IV. OPTIMIZED HYBRID PASSIVE FILTER
From the above discussion it is concluded that drive with
only AC choke or with only DC choke does not provide any
optimal solution for harmonic mitigation. Therefore, a new
optimal solution has been proposed to fulfill the strict
harmonic requirement at the PCC. The proposed hybrid
passive filter includes a combination of an AC choke and a
small DC choke as shown in Fig. 7.


Fig. 7: Drive with proposed hybrid passive filter
In order to compare the harmonic performance of the
proposed hybrid passive filter, the system impedance
including transformer impedance and grid impedance are the
same as used in previous section.
It is already confirm from the analysis performed in
previous section that the AC choke gives better harmonic
performance compare to the large DC choke (Fig. 5). A
number of simulations have been carried out with combination
of 1.5mH AC choke together with different size DC choke
(like 300H and 600H). The simulation results of the
proposed hybrid passive filter are shown in Fig. 8, where the
combination of the AC choke and the small DC choke gives
better harmonic performance compare to the AC choke alone.
However, at same time if the DC choke inductance increases
from 300H to 600H, there is no significant difference in
harmonic performance. Therefore, a care should be considered
while selecting the combination of AC choke and DC choke
inductances.


Fig. 8: Harmonic performance of a drive with 1.5mH AC choke versus
various combinations of AC choke and DC chokes at different power levels

V. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION
In order to verify the harmonic performance of proposed
hybrid passive filter, a laboratory prototype of drive has been
developed as shown in Fig. 9. The connection of prototype is
done in such a way that it is easy to replace the AC choke or
DC choke.
The drive is connected to a 60Hz, 440V
rms
grid with a grid
inductance (L
g
) of 100H. To model the step-down transformer
impedance, the drive has been connected to a series inductance
(L
t
) of 28H.
Various AC and DC choke inductances have been used for
the simulations and analysis. However, due to physical
unavailability of some of these AC and DC choke inductances.
A comparative analysis has been performed to justify the
similarity in the simulation model and laboratory prototype
measurement. Fig. 10-11 show the line current waveform of
laboratory prototype and simulation model respectively for a
drive with 1.5mH AC choke and 600H DC choke
(1.5mH+600H) at 9.3kW power.

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Fig. 9: Laboratory prototype with the proposed hybrid passive filter


Fig. 10: Line current waveform of the laboratory prototype with 1.5mH AC
choke and 600H DC choke (1.5mH + 600H) at 9.3 kW power


Fig. 11: Line current waveform of simulation model with 1.5mH AC choke and
600H DC choke (1.5mH + 600H) at 9.3 kW power

Fig. 12 shows the comparison of line current spectrum of
the laboratory prototype and simulation model. Laboratory
prototype measurement is very close to simulation model
results. Therefore, it is assume that the conclusion drawn by
simulation analysis is also valid for real time measurement.
However, still a number of measurements have been performed
at laboratory prototype with various AC choke and or DC
choke inductances at different power levels to verify the
harmonic performance.


Fig. 12: Comparison of simulated current harmonics with laboratory
measurement for (1.5mH + 600H) chokes at 9.3 kW power

Fig. 13 presents the laboratory measurement comparision
of harmonic performance of AC choke and DC choke to verify
the simulation analysis shown in Figure 5. As expected
laboratory measurement also confirm that AC choke given
better harmonic performance compare to DC choke.
Similarly the conclusion drawn from Fig. 6 is that even a
large AC choke alone will not give any significant
improvement in THD
V
is now verified by laboratory
measurement shown in Fig. 14, where even by using the twice
of the inductance of AC choke (i.e 3.0mH) will not give any
significant improvement in THD
V
compare to 1.5mH AC
choke.


Fig. 13: Harmonic performances of a laboratory prototype drive with 1.5mH
AC choke and 2.5mH DC choke at different power levels

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Fig. 14: Harmonic performances of a laboratory prototype drive with 1.5mH
and 3.0mH AC chokes at different power levels

Fig. 15 presents the laboratory measurement for proposed
hybrid passive filter where 1.5mH AC choke and different DC
choke (300H and 600H) combination has been used.
Similar to simulation analysis shown in Fig. 8, the
combination of AC choke and DC choke gives better THD
V

compare to only AC choke is now verified by laboratory
measurement shown in Fig. 15.


Fig. 15: Harmonic performance of a laboratory prototype drive with1.5mH
AC choke vs various combinations of AC choke and DC chokes at different
power levels

At the same time, now it is verified by laboratory measurement
also that much increment in DC choke inductance will not give
any significant difference in harmonic performance. This can
be visualized in Fig. 15 by comparing the harmonic
performance of 1.5mH AC choke compare to (1.5mH+300H)
and again comparing (1.5mH+300H) with (1.5mH+600H).
This show that going from 1.5mH AC choke to
(1.5mH+300H) gives significant improvement in THD
V

compare to going from (1.5mH+300H) to (1.5mH+600H).
Therefore, a proper selection of AC choke and DC choke
combination can full-fill the strict harmonic requirement at
PCC.
VI. CONCLUSION
In various industrial applications still traditional harmonic
mitigation techniques like AC choke and DC choke are
attractive solutions due to their cost effective and mature
technology. Therefore, this paper has focused to improve the
traditional harmonic mitigation techniques.
In some applications such as micro-grid or stand-alone grid,
there are strict requirements on THD
V
at the PCC to comply
with standards. Therefore, a new harmonic factor (K
i_new
) is
also described to calculate the THD
V
based on current
harmonics.
A comparative analysis has been performed by simulations
and then verified by laboratory measurement to compare the
harmonic performance of the AC choke and the DC choke and
also discussed the pros and cons of each individual technique.
Finally, a hybrid passive filter has been proposed based on
traditional techniques to optimize the harmonic performance
of the system.
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