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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

New Configuration of UPQC for

Medium-Voltage Application
B. Han, Senior Member, IEEE, B. Bae, Student Member, IEEE, S. Baek, and G. Jang, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper proposes a novel configuration of a unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) which can be connected to
the distribution system without series injection transformers. The
operation of the proposed system was analyzed through simulations with PSCAD/EMTDC and experimental works with a scaled
hardware model, assuming that the UPQC is connected with the
22.9-kV distribution line. The proposed UPQC has the ultimate capability of improving power quality at the point of installation on
power distribution systems. It has flexibility in expanding the operation voltage by increasing the number of H-bridge modules.
Index Termsdynamic voltage restorer (DVR), H-bridge,
PSCAD/EMTDC, static synchronous series compensator (SSSC),
Static var Compensator (STATCOM), unified power-flow controller (UPFC), unified power-quality conditioner (UPQC).

I. INTRODUCTION

S MORE sensitive loads have come into wide use, power

quality is a big issue of customers and utilities. The unified
power-quality conditioner (UPQC) has been widely studied by
many researchers as an ultimate device to improve power quality
[1]. The UPQC has two converters that share one dc-link capacitor.
The presently developed UPQC operates in much lower
dc-link voltage than the operation voltage of the distribution
system. The restriction in dc-link voltage is due to the maximum sustained voltage of the switching element.
Series connection of the switching element was developed to
increase the dc-link voltage. However, the maximum allowable
number of switching elements is limited. Step-down transformers are normally used to match the converter operation
voltage with the transmission voltage.
A multilevel converter was proposed to increase the converter
operation voltage, avoiding the series connection of switching
elements. However, the multilevel converter is complex to form
the output voltage and requires too many back-connection
diodes or flying capacitors [2].
A multibridge converter composed of several H-bridge modules for each phase, was proposed to increase the converter operation voltage. The application of a multibridge converter for
STATCOM was first proposed in [3] and [4]. And the application of a multibridge converter for static synchronous series
compensator (SSSC) and unified power-flow controller (UPFC)

Manuscript received January 26, 2005; revised April 15, 2005. This work
was supported by the ERC program of MOST/KOSEF (Next-Generation Technology Center). Paper no. TPWRD-00051-2005.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Myongji University, Kyunggi-do 449-728, South Korea (e-mail: erichan@mju.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2005.860235

Fig. 1.

Configuration of proposed UPQC.

were described in [5][7]. Recently, a dynamic voltage restorer

(DVR) with three H-bridge modules was proposed in [8].
This paper proposes a new configuration of UPQC, in which
each phase consists of several pairs of H-bridge modules isolated through a single-phase multiwinding transformer. The operation of the proposed UPQC was verified through simulations
with PSCAD/EMTDC. The feasibility of hardware implementation was confirmed through experimental works with a scaled
model. The proposed UPQC can be directly connected to the
distribution system without a series injection transformer, which
struggles with core saturation and voltage drop.
II. PROPOSED SYSTEM
A. System Concept
Fig. 1 shows a configuration of the proposed UPQC based on
several pairs of H-bridge modules for each phase. Each pair has
two H-bridge modules connected in parallel through a common
dc-link capacitor. The H-bridge module in shunt part is connected in series through a multiwinding transformer, while the
H-bridge in series part is directly connected in series and inserted in the distribution line.
B. Output Waveform
The proposed UPQC has a bypass function to remove the series converter from service during the distribution system fault.

0885-8977/$20.00 2006 IEEE

HAN AND BAE: CONFIGURATION OF UPQC FOR MEDIUM-VOLTAGE APPLICATION

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Fig. 2. PWM pulse generation for H-bridge. (a) Carriers and reference signal.
(b) Logic for gate pulse generation.

The bypass function is implemented by the operation of an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) bypass switch and mechanical circuit breaker. The line overcurrent can be bypassed first
by the IGBT switch and then by the mechanical circuit breaker.
However, it is possible to attempt a bypass scheme using the series converter switches when the maximum fault current is lower
than the maximum current rating of the converter switches.
For the purpose of simulation, it is assumed that the shunt and
series converters have three H-bridge modules for each phase.
Fig. 2 shows the principle of pulsewidth-modulation (PWM)
gate-pulse generation for the H-bridge module. Fig. 2(a) shows
two carrier signals with a reference signal for converter module
1. The frequency of carrier T1 and T2 is assumed to be 1 kHz.
Each of two carriers has 180 phase shift from each other. In
order to generate the gate pulse for other H-bridge module, the
other two carriers are required, which have 120 phase shift
from T1 and T2, respectively. Fig. 2(b) shows the logic diagram
to generate the gate pulse for the H-bridge module.
Fig. 3 shows the output voltage build-up of one phase and the
harmonic analysis results of the output voltage. Fig. 3(a) shows
,
,
, and
the output voltage of each converter module
.
the output voltage of cascaded three converter modules
is much closer to the sinusoidal waveform, compared with the
,
, and
. Fig. 3(b) shows the spectrum analysis result
for the output voltage of each converter module and the output
voltage of cascaded three converter modules.
A large number of high-level harmonics are involved in the
output of one module, while a significantly small number of
low-level harmonics are involved in the output of cascaded three
modules. If each carrier has a frequency of 1 kHz, the cascaded
output voltage of modules has an equivalent switching effect
of
2 1 kHz.
C. Controller Design
The UPQC controller was designed using the instantaneous
power method based on 0 transform. The instantaneous
power method makes it possible to generate the proper compensation signal by detecting a negative-sequence component,

Fig. 3. Waveform and harmonics analysis of output. (a) Output waveform of

V1, V2, V3, and VA. (b) Spectrum analysis of V1, V2, V3, and VA.

Fig. 4.

Positive-sequence voltage detector.

a zero-sequence component, and a harmonic component of the

source voltage. There are three major elements in the UPQC
controller, which are a positive-sequence detector, a shunt inverter control, and a series inverter control.
The positive-sequence detector shown in Fig. 4 extracts the
positive-sequence component from the disturbed three-phase
source voltage. The source voltage is measured to derive the
fundamental component of current with unity magnitude
and
, passing it through the phase-

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

Fig. 6. Control block diagram of the series converter.

Fig. 5.

TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Control block diagram of the shunt converter.

locked loop (PLL) and the sine-wave generator. The instantaand

are obtained with
neous active and reactive power
and
. The active and reacthe transformed component
and , which are obtained passing
and
tive power
through the low-pass filter, include the positive-sequence fundamental component of the source voltage. So the instantaneous
and
is obvalue of the positive-sequence component
tained with (1)
(1)
The reference voltage
,
, and
are derived
from the nominal instantaneous active and reactive power
and , using (1) and inverse 0 transformation.
The shunt inverter control shown in Fig. 5 has two major
functions to compensate the current harmonics generated in the
nonlinear load and to maintain the dc-link voltage constant. In
normal operation, the shunt control calculates the compensating
current for the harmonic current and the reactive power, considdue to system and inverter operation.
ering the power loss
This loss should be compensated to maintain the dc-link voltage
during series inverter operation. The reference value of compensating current is derived using (2). And the difference between
the measured value and the reference value of compensating current passes through proportional control. The output is used to
obtain the reference voltage for PWM switching with the feedforward component from the dc-link control

Fig. 7. APF operation of the shunt converter.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

(2)
The function of a series inverter is to compensate the voltage
disturbance in the source side, which is due to the fault in the
distribution line. The series inverter control calculates the reference voltage to be injected by the series inverter, comparing the
positive-sequence component with the disturbed source voltage.
The reference voltage for PWM switching of the series inverter
is obtained from the proportional control and the feedforward
control. Equation (3) shows the control equation to calculate
the reference voltage. Fig. 6 shows the configuration of series
inverter control, which is based on (3)
(3)

In order to analyze the operation of the proposed UPQC, computer simulations with PSCAD/EMTDC were performed. The
power circuit is modeled as a three-phase four-wire system with
a nonlinear load that is composed of a three-phase diode bridge
with - load in the dc side. The controller was modeled using
the built-in control block in PSCAD/EMTDC software. The circuit parameters used in simulation are shown in Table I. The
maximum simulation time was set up by 700 ms. It is assumed
that the shunt inverter starts to operate at 100 ms, while the series inverter starts to operate at 200 ms.
Fig. 7 shows the current waveform when the shunt inverter
operates in active power filter mode. The load current is compensated by the shunt converter current to make the source current sinusoidal.

HAN AND BAE: CONFIGURATION OF UPQC FOR MEDIUM-VOLTAGE APPLICATION

Fig. 8.

Simulation results with voltage sag.

Fig. 8 shows the compensated result when the voltage sag

occurs in the source side. It is assumed that phases A, B, and C
have 30%, 20%, and 10% of voltage sag, respectively, as shown
in the first graph. The second graph shows the load voltage
compensated by the UPQC. The third graph shows the output
voltage of the series inverter. The fouth, fifth, and sixth graphs
show the current waveform of the source, load, and shunt inverter. It is confirmed that the UPQC compensates the voltage
sag in the source and makes the load voltage constant.
Fig. 9 shows the compensated result when the voltage sag
occurs in the source side. It is assumed that phases A, B, and
C have 30%, 20%, and 10% of voltage swell, respectively,
as shown in the first graph. The seond graph shows the load
voltage compensated by the UPQC. The third graph shows the
output voltage of the series inverter. The fourth, fifth, and sixth

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Fig. 9. Simulation results with voltage swell.

graphs show the current waveform of the source, load, and

shunt inverter. It is also confirmed that the UPQC compensates
the voltage swell in the source and makes the load voltage
constant.
IV. PROTOTYPE EXPERIMENT
A prototype was built and tested to confirm the feasibility
of actual hardware implementation. In order to simulate the
voltage sag and the voltage swell, a source simulator was used.
A dummy load was built to simulate the nonlinear load. UPQC
was also built in a panel with one solid-state switch and digital-signal-processing (DSP) processor. Fig. 10 shows the scaled
model of the proposed UPQC, which was used in the experiment
with the ac power source and the dummy load. Table II shows
the circuit parameters used in the experiment.

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Fig. 10.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

Fig. 11.

Harmonics analysis of an inverters output voltage.

Fig. 12.

DC-link voltage control.

Fig. 13.

Harmonic current compensation.

Scaled model of UPQC.

TABLE II
CIRCUIT PARAMETERS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL MODEL

Fig. 11 shows the output voltage of one module and cascaded

three modules and their spectrum analysis results. The cascaded
output has the same harmonic level with 3.6 kHz of switching
frequency when the carrier has a frequency of 600 Hz. Therefore, the cascaded output has a much lower level of harmonics
through the carrier phase-shift scheme.
Fig. 12 shows the tracking performance of dc-link voltage
control when the reference dc-link voltage changes in step
mode. The two graphs confirm that the measured dc-link
voltage of each capacitor in one phase is properly regulated
through the controller as shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 13 shows the current waveform when the shunt inverter
operates in active power filter mode. The load current is compensated by the shunt converter current to make the source current sinusoidal. The first two waveforms are the reference value
and measured value of shunt inverter current. The second two

waveforms are the load current and the source current. There
are some transients in the source current, which are due to the
steepness of load current changes.
Figs. 14 and 15 show the experimental results when the
source voltage has unbalanced sag and swell. It is assumed that
the phase A, B, and C has 30%, 20%, and 10% of voltage sag or
swell, respectively. Both results confirm that the load voltage is

HAN AND BAE: CONFIGURATION OF UPQC FOR MEDIUM-VOLTAGE APPLICATION

Fig. 16.

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Conceptual diagram for system realization.

V. SYSTEM REALIZATION

Fig. 14.

Voltage sag compensation. (a) Source voltage. (b) Load voltage.

The system realization aims at the development of a practical system that can be built with commercially available
components. A commercially available high-power dual IGBT,
FF200R33KF2 was considered for the building block of an
H-bridge. FF200R33KF2 has a peak offstate voltage of 3.3 kV
and a peak on-state current of 200 A. In order to guarantee safe
operation with enough margin, the operation voltage of 2.2 kV
and current of 140 A were considered for the system design.
The proposed UPQC is assumed to have a nominal operation
voltage of 22.9 kV and power rating of 3 MVA. The maximum
injection voltage in series part is assumed to be 50% of the operation voltage, which is about 6.6 kV. Four pairs of H-bridge
modules for each phase are required with enough safety if IGBT
FF200R33KF2 is used for the system design. The turn-ratio of
primary winding to each secondary winding in the single-phase
multiwinding transformer is designed to be 8:1. The root-meansquare (rms) voltage to be handled by each H-bridge is about
1.65 kV, which is much lower than 2.2 kV.
Fig. 16 shows the conceptual diagram of the proposed UPQC
including the distribution system. The proposed UPQC has four
pairs of H-bridge modules for each phase. There are a total of
12 pairs of H-bridge modules, in which each pair of H-bridge
modules has four dual IGBTs. Therefore, a total of 48 IGBTs
are required in the design of the proposed UPQC.
VI. CONCLUSION

Fig. 15.

Voltage swell compensation. (a) Source voltage. (b) Load voltage.

compensated properly as expected from the simulation results

shown in Figs. 8 and 9.

This paper proposes a new configuration of UPQC, in which

each phase consists of several pairs of H-bridge modules isolated through a single-phase multiwinding transformer. The operation of the proposed UPQC was verified through simulations
with PSCAD/EMTDC. The feasibility of hardware implementation was confirmed through experimental works with a scaled
model.
The proposed UPQC can be directly connected to the distribution system without a series injection transformer, which
struggles with core saturation and voltage drop. It has flexibility

1444

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

in expanding the operation voltage by increasing the number of

H-bridge modules. The proposed UPQC might have the ultimate
capability of improving power quality at the point of installation
on the power distribution system.
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[1] M. Aredes, K. Heumann, and E. H. Watanabe, An universal active
power line conditioner, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 13, no. 2, pp.
545551, Apr. 1998.
[2] M. Aredes et al., A combined series and shunt active power filter, in
Proc. IEEE/KTH Stockholm Power Tech Conf., Stockholm, Sweden, Jun.
1995, pp. 1822.
[3] H. Fujita and H. Akagi, The unified power quality conditioner: The integration of series and shunt active filters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron.,
vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 315322, Mar. 1998.
[4] F. Peng, J. McKeever, and D. Adams, A power line conditioner using
cascade multilevel inverters for distribution systems, IEEE Trans. Ind.
Appl., vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 12931298, Nov./Dec. 1998.
[5] F. Peng and J. Lai, A multilevel voltage-source inverter with separate
DC source for static var generation, in Proc. IEEE/IAS Annu. Meeting,
Orlando, FL, Oct. 812, 1995, pp. 25412548.
[6] B. Han, S. Baek, H. Kim, and G. Karady, Dynamic characteristic analysis of SSSC based on multibridge inverter, IEEE Trans. Power Del.,
vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 623629, Apr. 2002.
[7] B. Han, H. Kim, and S. Baek, Performance analysis of SSSC based on
three-level multi-bridge PWM inverter, Elsevier Sci. Elect. Power Syst.
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[8] B. Li, S. Choi, and D. Vilathgamuwa, Transformerless dynamic voltage
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B. Han (S91M92SM00) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Seoul National
University, Seoul, Korea, in 1976, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University, Tempe,
in 1988 and 1992, respectively.
Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Myongji University, Seoul,
Korea. He was a Senior Research Engineer with the
Science and Technology Center, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, East Pittsburgh, PA. His research
interests include the high-power power electronics
and flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS).

B. Bae (S05) received the B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in

electrical engineering in 2001 and 2003, respectively,
from Myongji University, Seoul, Korea, where he is
currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree.
His research interests include power-electronics
applications for flexible ac transmission systems
(FACTS) and custom power.

S. Baek received the B.S., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees

in electrical engineering from Myongji University,
Seoul, Korea, in 1997, 1999, and 2004, respectively.
Currently, he is an Associate Research Engineer
in the Next-Generation Power Technology Center,
Myongji University. His research interests include
power-electronics application for flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS) and custom power.

G. Jang (M95) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees

from Korea University, Seoul, Korea, and the Ph.D.
degree from Iowa State University, Ames, in 1997.
Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea University. He was a Visiting Scientist in the Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department, Iowa State
University, for one year, and was a Researcher with
the Korea Electric Power Research Institute, Taejon,
Korea, for two years. His research interests include
power quality and power system control.