National Power & Energy Conference (PECon) 2004 Proceedings, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

132

SVM Based Hysteresis Current Controller for a

Three Phase Active Power Filter
L. P. Ling, and N.A. Azli

accuracy and unconditioned stability to the system. Besides

Absfract-a space vector modulation (SVM) based *hysteresis that, this technique is the easiest and most suitable for current

current controller (HCC) technique for a three phase shunt active

power filter is proposed. The switching control algorithms of the
proposed SVM based HCC manage to generate compensated
current according to the reference current. Harmonics extraction
is based on the instantaneous active and reactive power theorem
in time domain by calcutating t h e power compensation. A closed
loop control system is implemented and the error current is the
difference between the reference current obtained from the power
compensation and the actual current that needs to be injected
back into the line. By iniplementing this control strategy, the
active power filter (APF) manages 'to generate better
compensated harmonics currents t o the line.
Terms-Active power filter, Compensated harmonics
current, Hysteresis current controller, Instantaneous reactive
power, Reactive power compensation, Space vector modulation.
Indu

I. INTRODUCTION
S power electronics are widely used nowadays, these
loads seems to be the most common source of power
harmonics in the power system Passive and active power
filters (APF) are used in order to improve this unclean power

supply. Different techniques and control strategies for APFs

had been proposed depending on the conditioning purpose
required. Various conditioning methodologies of active power
line conditioning had been discussed in 111. Besides that, there
are various types of active power filter's configurations. The
common categories of APFs are shunt, series and hybrid
configurations. However, shunt APFs are mostly used in the
commercial stage. It i s normally a voltage fed inverter with a
current minor loop [2], [3]. There are many control strategies
for shunt APFs. One popular time domain analysis tool is the
instantaneous power theorem (pq theorem) by Akagi et al. in
1980s. This theorem depends on the instantaneous current and
voltage. This theorem is applied in conjunction with a PWM
current controller in order to produce appropriate switching
signals for the harmonics current compensator t41-163. The
hysteresis current controller (HCC) is the most commonly
proposed control method in time domain. This method
provides instantaneous current corrective response, good
h o w Pei Ling is with the Control and Instrumentation Engineering
Department, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Univmih Tehologi
Malaysia, 81310 UTM Skudai, Malaysia (e-mail: leowpl@fke.utm.my).
Naziha Ahmad Azli is with the Energy Conversion Department
(ENCON), Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Telolologi Malaysia,
81 3 IO URVl Skudai, Malaysia (e-mail: naziha@ike.um.my).

0-7803-8724-4/04/$20.00 02004 IEEE.

controlled inverters [l], [7], [SI.The disadvantage of this HCC

is that it requires high switching frequency, However, this
weakness, can be overcome by conjunction of the space vector
modulation (SVM) technique to the controller. SVM was first
introduced by the German researchers in the mid of 1980s.
This technique showed several advantages aver the traditional
pulse width modulation fPWM) technique. S V M technique
can maximize the output voltage and also reduce the switching
number at the same carrier frequency of the PWM method.
Besides that, it can be easily programmed and implemented in
digital system [91-[12].
This paper presents the analysis based on the combination
of the three techniques above. The conjunction of the S V M
technique with the HCC generates gate switchmg pulses for
the APF and the instantaneous active and reactive power
theory @q theorem) is used to generate the reference
compensated current for the current controller as this system is
implemented in a closed loop form. The three phase shunt APF
generates the desired compensated harmonics currents for each
phase according to the error between the reference current
from the pq theorem and the generated compensated current
from the shunt APF.
11. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

Fig. 1 shows the fimdaniental blocks of the proposed closed

loop control strategy for a three phase APF. The configuration
for the APF is in the form of a current regulated voltage source
inverter. Power compensation technique in conjunction with
the SVM based HCC is used to generate appropriate gate
switching signals for the three phase APF.
Reactive power compensation technique is used to isolate
the desired compensated harmonics it* with the fundamental
signal. The desired compensated harmonics i,* is used as the
reference current in the system This allows the proposed APF
to produce the output current according to the reference
current i,* from the pq calculation. Besides that, the feedback
current signal is the output current i, of the inverter whch
needs to be injected back into the power line.
The current error signal is acquired from the difference
between the reference current and the feedback current. This
current error signal is then fed into two sets of hysteresis
comparators to determine the region and the vector of the
reference current. The status of the outer and inner band errors

'

133
are sent into the region detector and the switching function
table. Six sets of appropriate gate switching signals are
generated and are sent to the voltage source inverter. The
desired compensated current is generated by the three phase
inverter and is injected back into each power line to
compensate the distorted Lines current.

&:,

The transformation coordinates of the related space vectors

are shown as follows:
1 -0.5

-0.5

As a result, (he conventional power for thee phase circuits can

be derived as follows:

- - -e p .-ip = e&

p = e, . ,i

-k

+ epip

(3)

and the instantaneous reactive power is defined as follows:

- - -

= Fa x ip+ ep x ia = evia -ea,

(4)

From (3) and (4), the equation can be expressed as

U

Fig. 1 , Block diagram of the proposed APF

(5)

and from (S), the instantaneous compensating currents can be

A. Reactive power compensalion
derived by
The instantaneous active and reactive power theory deals
with the voltages and currents mathematically to calculate the
imaginary power of the three phase power circuits. The
(6)
instantaneous imaginary power is the reactive power which
needs to be eliminated. This pq theorem performs
instantaneously as the calculation is based on the instantaneous aS the compensator will only compensate the instantaneous
voltages and currents of the three phase circuits [4].
reactive power, the real power is always set to zero. The
The instantaneous voltages, e,, eb , e, , and currents, & , i b ,
instantaneous reactive power is set into opposite vectors in
iC
are expressed as instantaneous pace
Fig shows order to cancel the
component in the line current, The
the transfomutions Of the three phase
and
t h e e phase compensated currents are defined as follows:
vectors in ~ 4 - coordinates
c
into orthogonal coordinates,
coordinates.
I

ih

Fig. 2. Orthogonal coordinate transformation

(7)

These instantaneous compensating currents for each phase icn*,

icb*, and ice* are used as the reference currents for the current

134

controller.

3. S VM Bused HCC
The S V M technique treats the inverter as a whole unit,
which is different when compared to P W M technique. The
inverter can be driven to one of the eight unique switching
states, where each state corresponds to a space vector [lo],
[12]. Fig. 3 shows the space voltage vectors according to the
eight switching states. Vo is the zero voltage vector, and it
normally has two switching pattems Vo (000) and V, (1 11).
However, in this paper, the zero voltage vector is always set to
vo (000).
v3 (010)

desired space vectors Vk and the related regions of each state.

To avoid confusion, each Vk of each state is represented by
three output parameters, y l , y2, and y3 w h c h are set according
to the output signals of the inner band hysteresis comparators.
These three parameters are then used to generate six sets of
gate switching signals of the APF.
TABLE I
SVM BASEDSWITCHING
FUNCTION
TAELE

v2 (1 IO)

v4 (011)
I

Fig. 3. Space vectors and derivative vectors of current error in

region I

111. SIMULATION RESULTS

The derivative vectors deidt o f the current error determines

the correct or deslred space voltage vectors VI:for each state.
Fig, 3 shows the desired output space voltage vectors V,* is
located in region I. The derivative vectors of the current error
respect to the output space.voltage vector in region I shows
that del/dt and de2/dt provides the mini" values of

The performance of the proposed control strategy is

evaluated through digital simulation using Matlab Simulink
program. The outer tolerance bands and the inner tolerance
bands are set to roughly 8% and 4% of the maximum
harmonics current respectively. However, as the applied loads
are dynamic, the settings of the tolerance band have to be
reconsidered. This is because the magnitudes of the harmonics

derivative vectors of the current error. Hence, the correct

current are changing according to the loads applied.

space voltage vectors for V,* are V,, Vz and Vo.

Based on the SVM principles, only correct and adequate
vectors will be applied in each switching state. By
implementing this technique to the HCC, this can reduce the
unnecessary number of switching. HCC is used to denote
further information of the derivative vectors of the current
error. Two sets of different tolerance band hysteresis
comparators are used. Each set consists of three individual
hysteresis comparators. The wider tolerance band hysteresis
comparator is called the outer band controller which is used to
denote the region of the output vectors. And the comparator
with narrow band or the inner band comparator is used to
denote the proper space voltage vectors. T h e output signais of
the outer band HCC, Bo,, Bb,, B,, aad the output signals of the
inner band HCC, Bair Bbi, Bci, provides the information to a
programmable logic array to produce appropriate gate
switching signals to the three phase APF.
The signals of each sets of the hysteresis comparator for all
regions are arranged in Table 1 to show the output of the

Fig. 4(a) shows the compensated harmonics current in

phase A which is injected to the line by the APF with the outer
and inner bands tuned to 3.0 and 1.2A respectively. T h s
tolerance bands are tuned in with respect to the initial
harmonics loads current. These bands produced smooth and
fine compensated harmonics current for the whole simulation
of dynamics loads. Fig. 4(b) and (c) shows a wider range of
tolerance bands settings for outer and inner bands. However,
the outputs obtained are not satisfactory. Wider tolerance
bands failed to produce accurate output signals for the SVM
switching function table.
Fig. 5(a) shows the distorted line current of dynamic
load's change in phase A. The desired compensated harmonics
current due to the changing loads is shown in Fig. 5(b). This
compensated harmonics current is regenerated and injected
back into the line by the SVM based HCC active power filter.
Fig. 5(c) shows the compensated supply current of phase A
with dynamically changing loads. Analysis of 10 cycles of the
signals in Fig. 5 shows that the proposed APF reduces the
THD of the supply line current from 30.11% to 5.32% which

135
IiamonIcs Spectrum br the Uncmpensaled Line Currenl
Fundament4 (5MZ) = 210.7, THO= 30.11%

the comparison of the harmonics spectrum for uncompensated

and compensated fine currents'are shown in Fig. 6.

"t 'I

Commsaled Harmonics Currenl

.8

83;

I"

- ' ~ . 1 3 0.t35

0.14

0.145

0.15

0.155

0.18

0,185

(al

(a)
Hannmic$ Spectmm br the Compensated Line Current
Fundamental (50Hr) = 210.5, MO= 5.32%

Fig. 6. Ilarmonics spectrum (a) distorted line current,

(b) compensated line current.
(E)

llme

(8)

Fig. 4. Compensated harmonics current with outer and inner

Loleraiice bands are set to (a) 3.0 and 1.2 A respectively,
(b) 6.4 and 3.2 A respectively, (c) 14.4 and 7.0 A respectively.

Thc sccond niost sigtiificant hannotiics uf h c distorted linc

current which is about 20% of the fundamental component is
reduced to 4% of the fundamental component. As a result, the
THD of the line current is improved.

IV. CONCLUSlON

r
J
0.05

0.l (a)

0.15

0.2

300,

The proposed APF has managed to produce compensated

harmonics current regardless to the changing of loads. The
SVM based HCC has provided proper switching vectors tu the
APF by detecting the region and vectors of each states. Better
compensated harmonics current is obtained by setting snialler
tolerance bands for the hysteresis comparators.

v. REFERENCES
0.05

0.1 (b)

0.15

0.2

W. M .Grady, M.J. Samotyi, and A. H. Noyola, "Survey of active line

conditioning methodologies;' f6E.E Transnclions 011 Power Ddiiwy,
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H. Akagi, ''Trends in active power line conditioners," IEEE
TransacIiorrson Power Electronics, vu]. 9. pp. 263-268,May 1994.
H. Akagi, "New trends in active filters for power conditioning," IKEE
Transactions on Industry Applicarions, vol. 32, pp. 1312-1322,

Nov/Dcc 1936.
Y. Kanewa, and A. Nabae. "Instantaneous reactive power
compensators comprosing switching devices without energy storage
H. Akagi.
(cl
Timiis)

0.1

0.15

0.2

Fig. 5 . Current waveform (a) distorted line current,

(b) Compensated harmonics current, (c) Compensated suppIy
current.

components," IEEE Pans. Induslry Applications. vol.lA-20, pp. 625630, May/June 1984.
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136
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VI. BIOGRAPHIES
Leow lei Ling was born in the state of Selangor in
Malaysia, on August 5*, 1980. She paduated from
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in the year of 2003.
She is currentiy undergoing her masters degree in
electrical engineering majoring in Mechatmnics and
Automation Control in the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Univeniti Teknologi Malaysia.

Naziha Ahmnd Arli has been serving for 16 years as

a lecrurer at the Faculty of Electrjcal Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She received her
l3.Sc.E.E. degree from the University of Miami,
Florida, USA and her M.E.E. and Ph.D degrees from
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 1986, 1992 and
2002 respectively. She currently teaches power
electronics at both undergraduate and masters level.
Her research interests include power converters static
applications, power quality and PVifuei cell power
systems.