16th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference and Exposition Antalya, Turkey 21-24 Sept 2014

Three-Phase Three-Level Inverter Based Shunt

Active Power Filter
Necmi ALTIN Orhan KAPLAN Saban OZDEMIR
Gazi University Gazi University Gazi University
Department of Electrical and Department of Electrical and Ataturk Vocational School
Electronics Engineering Electronics Engineering Ankara, Turkey
Ankara, Turkey Ankara, Turkey sabanozdemir@gazi.edu.tr
naltin@gazi.edu.tr okaplan@gazi.edu.tr

Abstract In last decades frequently use of non-linear loads has harmonics and reactive power flowing in power systems. The
caused many power quality problems in power systems. The shunt active power filter operates as an ideal current supply
active power filters are developed to overcome these problems by injecting current 180 degrees out of phase with harmonics
using some power electronics. This paper presents a three phase components in power system [5]. Harmonic current detection,
shunt active power filter based on three-level neutral point DC voltage control and firing pulses production are three main
clamped inverter structure. In this study, the novel approach heading about shunt active power filter in the literature [3].
based on to determine the losses occurring inverter throughout a Fig.1 shows block diagram of a power system which contains a
period is proposed. The proposed approach reveals unwanted
shunt active power filter and a nonlinear load.
active current component with fundamental frequency contained
in the compensation current which causes oscillation and fall of
the DC voltage level of shunt active power filter. The
proportional-integral controller that has been widely used by
researchers is used to maintain the reference DC voltage level.
The proposed system is modeled with MATLAB/Simulink and
simulation studies are carried out. The obtained results from the
simulation studies show that the proposed approach is
uncomplicated, and cheaper than classical PI control algorithm
also it is effective as classical PI control algorithm.

Keywords- Active power filter, multi-level inverter, DC voltage

control, harmonic

I. INTRODUCTION
With developing technology, most of the loads which draw
nonlinear currents from power grid are getting growing day by
day in power systems. This situation brings about several
power quality problems such as harmonic pollution, low power
factor and shortened usage time of electronics equipment [1].
Previously, the passive filters are commonly used in power
systems to throw out power quality problems because of their
low cost and uncomplicated structure [2]. However, the passive
filters have significant drawbacks beside their benefits such as
being effective for only specified harmonics and load levels,
increasing the system size. In addition, these filters may cause
crucial negative effects like resonance in power systems, and
thus existing power quality problems may be even worse off
than before [3]. The active power filters are proposed as
another solution to get rid of power quality problems, which
uses power electronics techniques. The active power filter
presents dynamic solutions to improve power quality when
compared to passive filter [4].
Many different kinds of active power filter structures have
been designed to suppress several power quality problems by
researchers for last a few decades. The shunt active power filter
is most preferred active power filter type because it can inhibit
Fig.1. Block diagram of a power system containing a shunt
active power filter and a nonlinear load.
The multi-level inverters commonly used in high and
medium power applications and they have significant
advantages such as lower output filter requirement, lower EMI
level and lower output harmonics level of the output waveform
than a conventional two level inverter. The multi-level inverter
facilitates to reach to high powers using mass production
semiconductor switches. They work at lower frequencies that
allow the use of low frequency switches. Also they have a
positive effect on the efficiency of the inverter operating at low
frequencies. The output waveform of the multi-level inverter is
in the staircase view comprising many steps. Amplitude of
these steps and their numbers depend on the inverter
topologies. In this way, voltage stress across switching devices
composing multi-level inverter structure can be reduced and
the improvement of output waveform is contributed [6, 7].
In the literature, there are many studies about shunt active
power filters. There are novel harmonic detection methods for
reducing voltage fluctuations. If nonlinear load is changed
suddenly, DC voltage of shunt active power filter can fluctuate.

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16th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference and Exposition
The new harmonic detection method developed by the authors
accomplished harmonic filtration and reduction of DC voltage
fluctuation [8]. In Ref. [9] single phase active power filter
based with 5-level neutral point clamped inverter has been
introduced. The Direct Testing and Calculating Method and
Sliding Mode control was used to generate reference filter
current. The simulation result is developed by using MATLAB
software that the proposed system diminished total harmonic
distortion (THD) from 82.8% to 25.4% and reactive power
compensation was achieved. In Ref. [10] a three phase shunt
active power filter comprising three pieces single phase NPC
structure has been designed and implemented. The system
developed increased converter exibility in order to reach
higher voltage level and compensation capacity due to usage of
single-phase NPC converters [10]. Ref [11] dealt with DC
voltage fluctuation of single phase shunt active power filter in
transient case. Time delay to calculate harmonic current
detection caused fluctuations on DC voltage of filter and
authors gave a solution to reduce these fluctuations.
In this paper, three-phase shunt active power filter with
three-level NPC inverter structure is presented. The one of the
main parts of the shunt active power filter control algorithm is
DC bus voltage control [3].The DC bus voltage of the active
power filter cannot be maintained at the reference value owing
to inverter power losses [1]. For this purpose, a novel approach
is proposed in order to keep on the demanded DC voltage level
instead of classical PI control algorithm. The novel algorithm
performance is examined by using the simulation results
obtained from MATLAB/Simulink model.
II. MULTI-LEVEL INVERTER TOPOLOGY
Increasing power levels brought about the need to increase
current and voltages of semiconductor switches. However,
costs of the semiconductor switch increase exponentially with
voltage and currents of switches. There are also some certain
limits about current and voltage levels of the semiconductor
switches. In addition, operating frequencies of high power
switches are very low and thus, the filter size gets bigger. In
order to increase the power level, power switches connected to
serial or parallel to the increasing current or voltage values.
However, the difference in structure of switches, circuit and
differences between on-off signals caused to unbalanced
current sharing. As a solution of these problems multi-level
inverters can be used.
The first commercial multi-level inverter patent was taken
by Baker in 1975 [12]. An early study about neutral clamped
inverter is performed by Nabae [13]. Although the concept of
multi-level converter is known for more than thirty years, they
have not been interested in for many years, because they
contain higher numbers of circuit components than
conventional inverters, and their complex structures. The
operating principle of the multi-level inverter is that the voltage
applied to the inverter is to ensure the sharing of semiconductor
switches. It provides activate or deactivate of switches
according to specific rules. Using multi-level inverters to the
medium and high powers level is more economical when
compared with the conventional inverters and compete the low
power state. While efficiency of the inverter is higher, filtering
requirements, the harmonic levels, EMI level, dv/dt rates and
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switches voltage stress is lower than conventional inverter [6,
7].
Many studies are carried out on multi-level inverter
structures. The most important of multi-level inverter structures
are flying capacitor (FC), neutral point clamped (NPC), and the
cascaded H-Bridge (CHB). There are some disadvantages of
each topology: bulky capacitor requirement and increasing size
in FC, separate power supply requirement in CHB and voltage
imbalance problem in NPC structure. However, in the NPC
inverters different solutions suggested to prevent this
imbalance problems [14-16]. Because of no need to isolation
requirement, in this study NPC inverter preferred. Furthermore
a module switches which can be used for one leg or full leg of
the three-level NPC inverter is produced as commercial
product. So that design of NPC inverter may be easier than
other topologies [6, 17-20].
III. PROPOSED SHUNT ACTIVE POWER FILTER
In this study, the shunt active power filter based on three-
level NPC inverter structure is used to eliminate harmonic
components and to improve power factor of the system. The
most popular type of active power filter is shunt active power
filter. In Fig. 2, shunt active power filter with three-level NPC
topology used in this study is shown.
Fig.2. Topology of three-level NPC inverter based shunt active
power filter.
IV. CONTROL STRATEGY
Shunt active power filter control strategy is composed of
three main parts: harmonic current detection, DC bus voltage
control and firing pulses production [3]. In this section,
methodologies of these main parts used in this study are
examined.
A. Harmonic current detection method
Harmonic current detection method is crucial process
which should be taken into account to obtain precision
harmonic filtration of the power system. In this study, the
sinusoidal multiplication technique suggested by H.L. Jou et al
for single phase system is adopted to three-phase and used to
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acquire harmonic current detection. The harmonic components
of the power system each phase have been separately
calculated [21]. There are different harmonic current detection
methods in literature [22]. The method which is introduced
above is determined because it can be used to get the harmonic
current components in three phase power systems installed
balanced or unbalanced load. According to sinusoidal
multiplication method, if the voltage of the grid is in pure
sinusoidal waveform, non-linear load connected to power
system demands current include in various harmonic
components as given Eq. 1:
iL (t ) = i1 sin(t 1 ) + in sin(nt n ) (1)
n =2
The current drawn by the nonlinear load can be separated
into two parts. The first part of the load current is active
component in phase with the voltage of the grid and at the
fundamental frequency. The second part is harmonic current
component. This relation can be described simply as shown in
Eq. 2:
iL (t ) = is (t ) + ic (t ) (2)
where, is (t ) is the active current component, ic (t ) is the
compensation current component include in whole harmonic
current components and finally iL (t ) is total load current. The
first aim is calculating active current component, because
harmonic components of the power system can be achieved by
subtracting active current component from the load current.
Therefore magnitude of the active current component is
calculated by using the equation of average active power of the
system. The average power in fundamental frequency of the
system can be formulated as in Eq. 3.
1T
T 0
Ps* = vs (t ).iL (t )dt Vs .I1 cos 1
(3)
Hereafter the active current component magnitude can be
easily obtained as in Eq.4 represented.
Ps*
I1 cos1 = (4)
Vs
Instantaneous value of active current was acquired by
multiplying with unity sinus function which is in phase with
the grid voltage, and then, the harmonic current components of
the power system was calculated by subtracting the
instantaneous value of active current from the load current
shown as in Eq.5:
ic* (t ) = iL (t ) is (t ) . (5)
B. DC voltage control
Although active power filter cannot provide any active
power to power system, harmonic current component of the
power system calculated by harmonic current detection method
contains small amount of active current. This current must be
essential to meet the power losses of the active power filter, but
it causes oscillation of DC voltage of the filter. To overcome
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Antalya, Turkey 21-24 Sept 2014
this problem, the current should be determined and added the
active current component in phase with grid voltage. In
literature DC voltage regulation of the filter is widely provided
by using the difference the voltage value measured from DC
bus of the filter and determined reference voltage value via PI
control algorithm. The output of PI control corresponding to
filter power losses is added to the active component of the load
current. The block diagram of control algorithm referred above
is represented in Fig. 3.
Fig.3. Conventional DC voltage control algorithm.
In this paper, the novel approach has been proposed to
regulate the voltage of the DC capacitor. In continuous state,
the reference harmonic current component, ic*(t), does not
contain the active current at the fundamental frequency and it is
considered that filter does not provide the active current
component which is in phase with the voltage of the grid at the
fundamental frequency. Similarly, real compensation current,
ic(t), generated by the switches, should not contain active
current at the fundamental frequency. However, real average
active power of the inverter is not equal to zero because of
inverter losses. According to the novel approach, the difference
between real and reference power of the inverter is error value
and it corresponds to the inverter losses of the filter [1]. The
error can be calculated as in Eq. 6 and it can be controlled via a
PI controller. The block diagram of DC voltage control
algorithm proposed in this study is given in Fig. 4 [1].
1
T
e(t) = [vs(t)ic*(t) vs(t)ic(t)]dt (6)
Fig.4. The block diagram of the proposed DC voltage control
algorithm.
C. Firing pulses production (Current control method)
Several current control algorithms have been employed to
generate switching signals of three or single phase inverter.
They can be gathered at two main parts: linear and nonlinear
current control techniques. The hysteresis current control
algorithm is one of the nonlinear current control techniques and
has many advantages such as simplicity, reliability and lack of
tracking error [23]. Switching signals are derived directly when
the error exceeds the determined tolerance. In this study, the
hysteresis current control technique is used to generate
reference compensation current of the filter. The block diagram
of hysteresis current controller is shown in Fig. 5.
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16th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference and Exposition Antalya, Turkey 21-24 Sept 2014

Fig.5. The block diagram of hysteresis current controllers.

V. SIMULATION STUDY
To verify viability of the novel approach proposed for DC
voltage control, the power system given in Fig. 2 is modelled is
with MATLAB/Simulink and simulation studies are carried
out. The values belong to the simulation model are presented in
Table 1.

TABLE I. THE VALUES OF SIMULATION CIRCUIT b) Load1, RL2//CL (6,66//100F)

AC source voltage, Vs 220V
Fig.6. Load current and its total harmonic distortion analysis.
Fundamental frequency, f 50Hz Before shunt active filter was not connected to the power
Source inductance, Ls 1mH system, total harmonic distortion (THD) value of the current
Load1, RL1//CL, 20//100F drawn by nonlinear load was measured as 81.87% for 50%load
Load2, (performed after 0.25 s), RL2//CL 6,66//100F
and 46.59% for 100% load levels as given in Fig. 6.
DC bus capacitors CDC(C1=C2) 20000F
Filter inductor Lc 1mH

Three-phase full bridge uncontrolled rectifier was used as a

nonlinear load comprised RC in parallel. The nonlinear load
produces harmonic current components with high THD value
as in Fig.6 represented.

Fig.7. Load current and its total harmonic distortion analysis.

a) Load1, RL1//CL (20//100F)
As seen from the Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 shunt active power filter
is connected to the system, THD value of the source current is
reduced to 6.03% for 50% load level and 3.61% for 100% load
levels respectively. The harmonics which is produced by
nonlinear load is highly reduced via three-phase three-level
NPC active power filter. Furthermore it is clearly seen from the
Fig. 8, the NPC shunt active power filter is very fast response
to load changes.

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Fig.8. Load current and its total harmonic distortion analysis.
In addition power factor of the system is improved and
nearly unity power factor operation is obtained. The each phase
of the source currents and grid voltage waveforms are given as
in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9. The voltage and current waveforms of the power system
after shunt active power filter is connected
DC capacitor voltages and phase to phase voltages of the
NPC three-level inverter are given in Fig.10 and Fig. 11,
respectively. As it is seen from Fig. 8, the DC voltage values of
the NPC inverter capacitors are nearly equal and voltage
unbalance condition is prevented in case of the proposed novel
approach is used.
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Fig.10. DC bus voltage
Output voltage waveforms of the active power filter was shown
as in Fig.9.
Fig.11. Output voltage waveforms of the active power filter.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this study a shunt active power filter with three-phase three-
level NPC inverter structure is proposed. A novel control
algorithm was presented to control the DC voltage of the
active power filter. This algorithm accomplished to maintain
DC voltage level without oscillation. Also the proposed
system provides harmonic elimination and power factor
correction. It is seen that THD levels of the load currents are
decreased from 81.87% to 6.03% for 50% load and from
46.59% to 3.61% for full load conditions. It is seen that load
current THD level decreased significantly and it meets the
IEEE 519-1992 standard (3.61% < 5%).
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