ACTIVE POWER FILTER

PROJECT GUIDE: PROF. P.M. MESHRAM

BY, SUMIT KUMAR SINGH.

Active Power Filter

Active power filters play an important role in reducing harmonic contamination in power Lines.Active filters have the capability to compensate randomly varying currents.One of the most popular active power filters is the Shunt Active Power Filter,.A current source, Connected in parallel with the nonlinear load,is controlled to generate the required harmonic current

Operation principal of Shunt Active Power Filter

Functions of Active Filters 1. Reduction of the current THD 2.Reduction of the harmonic current content 3.Compensation of reactive power and an improvement of the power factor cos 4. Display of mains current and voltage 5.Load balancing

Shunt Hybrid Active Power Filter

Hybrid filter Combination of active and passive filters Active and passive filters have drawbacks The purpose of the hybrid filters is to overcome these problems that are characteristic of the individual filter type
Ls Ll Cl Load Cc C5 L5 C7 L7 Rl

Supply

Lc C dc Active Power Filter

Fig(a)

Ls

Ll Cl Load Cf Lf Lc Rl

Supply

C dc Active Power Filter Cc

Fig(b)
The comparison was made in current filtering capability while minimising power rating of active filter bridge The aim in simulations was to maintain supply current THD below 6% while minimising active filter current Harmonics producing load was 213 kVA 3-phase voltage source diode rectifier

Fig(a) A-phase load current

6% supply current THD could be achieved with two presented figures by using different coupling transformer transformation ratio Fig(a): transformation ratio 2:1 Fig(b): transformation ratio 4:1 Fig(b) was the most effective filter Active filter current was smallest in SHAPF Fig(b) Active filter power rating in Fig(a) 63.6% of the load Active filter power rating in Fig(b) 23.6% of the load

Fig(b) A-phase supply current

Parallel interleaved inverters for Shunt Active Power Filter

A common solution for harmonic compensation in large industrial plants is to mitigate the harmonic currents at the point of common coupling (PCC), by using either passive or active methods . As a passive method may create problems with uncontrolled resonances between the capacitor and the existent source impedance , a more efficient way is by using active filtering methods. Paralleling multiple inverters makes the design, production, installation and maintenance much simpler and flexible. Also it is easier to extend the total rated power of an active power filter (APF) by simply adding a new module.

Excluding the transformer and connecting the inverters directly on the ac-side as in Fig. 1, determines strong circulation currents between the inverters .
Because of sharing the same dc-capacitor one unfavorable consequence of such operation is the creation of a conduction path between the two inverters. Thus, a circulation current, here after referred to as cross-current, appears with a frequency equal to the switching frequency (Icc). The proposed approach is to minimize the circulation currents by using common-mode inductors installed for each inverter. The results obtained show that the use of the common mode inductors reduces the circulation currents to the desired limits, which makes the operation of the whole structure much more safer.The common mode inductors have to be designed considering also the nominal current of the inverter.

Fig(1)

Fig(2) common mode coils for reduction of the cross-currents.

Active Power Filter Based on Multi-stage Inverter

Each stage of the filter uses the pulsewidth modulation (PWM) method. The results confirmed high efficiency of such a compensating circuit. Multi-phase systems will be considered as design alternatives during the variant design of electric power supply systems. Increasing the number of phases in the electric power supply system, p, leads to multiple increase of the number of bridge elements, found in active power filters which are based on multi-stage inverter architecture.

Fig. Single-phase filter with two-stage inverter.

Each inverter converts some part of the power supplied by the thyristor controlled rectifier. In each stage, PWM is performed by controlling of switching elements. The compensating voltage (AC) of the active power filter is equal to the sum of filtered harmonics, with curtain accuracy. This compensating voltage is in anti-phase with the voltage in the node of connection of the active power filter, and thereby compensating the distortion power.

Five-Level Cascaded Active Filter for Power Line Conditioners

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 .

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.

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.

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 loop. The three phase active power filter comprises of 24- power transistors with freewheeling diodes, each phase consist of two-H-bridges in cascaded connection and every H-bridges having a dc capacitor.

Active Power Filter with Fundamental Magnetic Flux Compensation

A series hybrid active power filter based on fundamental magnetic flux compensation (FMFC) of the transformer is proposed in the paper and how such a series hybrid active power filter exhibited low impedance (not zero impedance ) at the fundamental frequency is originally clarified. A series transformer with air gap is chosen and its primary winding is connected in series between the power utility and harmonic-producing loads. The fundamental current instead of the harmonic currents of the transformers primary winding is detected and followed by applying a source PWM converter so as to produce a compensating fundamental current. The compensating fundamental current is injected to the secondary winding of the series transformer. When the injected fundamental current and power utility fundamental current component satisfy the fundamental magnetic flux compensation condition, the main magnetic flux of the series transformer to fundamental can be compensated to zero. And then the proposed series hybrid active power filter with FMFC exhibits very low primary leakage impedance at the fundamental frequency and naturally magnetizing impedance to harmonics so that the harmonic currents are forced to flow into the passive filter branches. As a result, the series transformer improves the source impedance to harmonics rather than fundamental so as to really act as harmonic isolator.

series hybrid active power filter

Current control of Active Power Filter

A new current control strategy for active power filters using multiple PWM voltage Source inverters can be done.This technique allows to compensate high power non Linear loads.The proposed current control strategy operates each PWM voltage-source Inverter with a different switching frequency generating specific current harmonic components of the loads. The control system of the active power filter consists of three modules,the low pass filter circuits for the generation of the generation of the compensating current referance Signals required for each PWM converter,the current control circuits of the PWM Inverters,and the control circuit for the dc capacitor voltage.

Hysterisis Current control

The control of a single phase APF using hysterisis current control is given. The D.C. voltage across the capacitor is sensed,compared with reference and the error is processed in a PI controller.This error multiplies a fixed amplitude sine wave which is pure and is in 180 deg phase with the source.The product forms one component of the current reference of the inverter.the harmonic current calculator receives the load current signal from the CT in the load line and a pure sine wave template from the control system & calculates the harmonic current components of reference current .These two components are added together and given as current reference into a hysterisis current controller.Hysterisis current control is indeed suitable if only low order harmonics(3,5,7etc) need be compensated .however,if harmonics upto 25th or so are to be cancelled,hysterisis control will require excessively high switching frequency .In addition ,the variation in switching frequency which is basic to hysterisis control makes it difficult to choose filter components.Hence constant switching frequency,unipolar switching schemes are preferred for implementing current control of Inverter in APF application as a rule.

Protection of shunt active power filters

The protection scheme is shown . It consists of a varistor connected in parallel to the secondary winding of each current transformer(CT) and a couple of antiparallel thyristors. The protection circuit of the series active power filter must protect only the PWM-VSI connected to the secondary of the current transformer and must not interfere with the protection scheme of the power distribution system.

The protection scheme must be able to limit the amplitude of the currents and voltages generated in the secondary circuits until the power system fault is cleared or the PWMVSI is isolated. This task is performed by the varistors, thyristors, and magnetic saturation characteristic of the transformers.

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