High-capacity Hybrid Power Filter for Harmonic Suppression and Reactive

Compensation in the Power Substation

Lina Wang An Luo

Department of Electrical Engineering College of Information Science and Engineering
Tsinghua Univ. Central South [Jniv.
Beijing City, China Changsha City, Hunan Province, China
w ~ I ~ ~ ~ I I ~tsinghua.
~ ~ I w IcdI U.~ CII
. an-luo@hotmail.com

Abssanct-A practicable high-capacity hybrid power filter reactive power simultaneously is needed. However,
system, with low cost and small hulk, is proposed, which is limited by the power rating and switching fiequency of
able to compensate harmonic currents and reactive power the electronics, the engineering application technologies
simultaneously in the high-voltage power substation. T h e of the bigh-voltage and large-capacity active filter
proposed system consists of a group of high-capacity
haven't been well solved yet.
passive filters and a n active filter with a series resonance
injecting circuit interface which is assumed by one branch This paper is motivated by the urgent want of a
of the passive filters. Reactive power compensation and large-capacity harmonic current and reactive power
most of harmonic current suppression is assumed by the compensation device in high-voltage industrial power
passive filters. The active filter in the proposed system is systems. The aim is to provide a practical active filter
mainly used to improve the characteristics of the total system for high power applications in general, with
filter system but not dedicate t o compensate reactive adequate filtering performance, low price and small
power, and it doesn't support the line voltage directly, so
bulk.
the DC-link voltage and the power rating requirement of
the power stage i s low. At the s a m e power rating, it has t h e In tlie literatures, two most extensively studied
ability to provide larger compensation capacity in higher active filter topologies for high power application[8-9]
voltage power system than the usual ones. T h e operating are shown in Fig. 1. Their common characteristic is that
principle, analysis and control of t h e proposed system a r e both use the passive filter to assume most of the
deeply discussed in the paper. T h e engineering application harmonic suppression and the active filter to improve
is also stated in detail. In the end, t h e experimental results the performance of the passive filter. So the power
a r e given to verify that the proposed system has good
characteristic of reactive power compensation and
rating requirement of the active part is relatively low.
harmonic filter.
The disadvantage of t h e first topology, as shown in
Fig.l(a), is that the inverter of the active filter has to
Keywords-Active Power Filter, High Power Cnpnciv work against the high voltage of the supply and a high
DC-link voltage is required. So the voltage rating
I. I NTRODUCTION requirement of the inverter switches is high. When the
line harmonic current is large, the kVA-rating of the
With the process of the technology reformation in power stage is also high. Consequently, the cost of the
the modern industry, more and more non-linear loads, whole filter is high and the bulk is large. In the second
such as diode or thyristor rectifiers, adjustable speed source non1 i n e a r
drives and cyclo-converters,b are introduced into the J loads
industrial field. The proliferation of these non-linear
loads results in a serious harmonics problem[ 11. A lot of passive
filter
research papers and methods have been proposed to i n v e r t er
solve it[2]. Conventionally, passive filters consisting of APF
tuned LC-filters and high-pass filters were often used.
However, insufficient passive filter characteristics or
even resonant amplification of harmonics on the one
hand and the decreasing costs of power electronic
components on the other hand increased interest in active
filter applications. In low-voltage power distribution
system, small-capacity active filters could have been
skillfully used and many universal topologies had been
contributed[3-7]. But the power distribution system on
coupling
transformer
!jf'"'~i
E er

the industry field is characterized by high voltage and A

..
large current, and often accompanied by low power (b)
factor, where a high-voltage and- large-capacity active Figure 1. Two often used hybrid active filter topologies in high I

filter which can compensate current harmonic and power applications

215
 coupling
t ransf ormer

outout f i l t e r
I 1 I I
active f i l t e r

Figure 2. The proposed hybrid active power filter

topology, as shown in Fig. l(b), the fundamental In section 2, the operation principles of the new
impedance of the passive filter is designed very large in active filter topology are presented. The method to
order to decrease the fiindamental voltage supported by obtain harmonic current reference is briefly stated in
the inverter. However, because of the large fundamental section 3. Engineering realization is addressed in section
impedance of the passive filter, this topology is not 4. In the end, typical experimental results are given.
suitable for large capacity of reactive compensation They evidently demonstrate that the proposed
either by active part or by passive part. Moreover, this high-capacity hybrid power filter is successfiil in
configuration is very sensitive to background voltage reactive power compensation and harmonic suppression.
harmonic in the source line, which is easy to excite
over-cturent in the filter branch. 11. THE PROPOSED HYBRID ACTIVE POWER
In this paper, a new configuration of hybrid active FILTER
power filter is proposed, as shown in Fig.2. It consists of Fig. 2 shows the system configuration of the
a group of high-capacity passive filters and a developed hybrid power filter system. It consists of
low-power-rating active filter with a series resonance active filter and passive filter, whose capacity is
injecting circuit interface which is assumed by one 12OOOKvar. In this system, passive filter is tuned at the
branch of the passive filter. The proposed topology has second, fifth and seventh harmonics respectively to
the following advantages: suppress the harmonic current and improve the power
(1) Series resonance injecting circuit is taken as the factor in the substation, which has some nonlinear loads
interface of the active filter with the utility. The active such as power converters whose character harmonics are
filter doesn't support the line voltage directly. So the fifth and seventh harmonics, and electric arc furnace
DC-link voltage and the voltage rating requirement of equipments which often generate second harmonic. The
the inverter switch is low. active filter is mainly used to suppress harmonic current
and improve the characteristics of passive filter. It does
(2) Using one branch of the passive filters as the not dedicate to compensate reactive power, because the
injecting circuit of the active filter, no additional element power rating requirement of the active filter to
is needed. The cost and the bulk of the hybrid active filter compensate reactive power in the power substation is too
won't increase too much. high to be realistic. The compensating current generated
by the active filter is injected to the main feeder by
(3) Most harmonic suppression and reactive
compensation are hlfilled by passive filters. The active coupling transfoimer and the capacitor C, (as shown in
filter only compensates the residential harmonic. So the Fig.2).
power rating of the power stage is very low. The initial
investment is acceptable for most industries. A. Design and analysis of the hybridpowerfilter
(4)The filtering performance of the total power filter The single-phase equivalent circuit of the passive
is effectively improved by the active pat. The series and filter in Fig.2 is shown in Fig.3. L, and C, are selected
parallel resonance occurred between the system to oscillate at fiindamental frequency in .order that most
impedance and the passive filter is damped by the active of the line voltage drops on the capacitor C, , while the
filter. fhndamental voltage at the second side of the
transformer is very low. C,, C, and L, are selected to

216
oscillate at second harmonic fiequency in order to
suppress second harmonic and compensate reactive
power of the main feeder. C, and L 2 , and C, and L,
are selected to oscillate at fifth and seventh harmonic
frequency respectively to suppress fifth and seventh
harmonic and compensate reactive power. So the values
of C,, C4 , L, , C, , L, , C, and L, should have the
following relationship,

L =- 1
0 1 (1) -
MiO c4
Figure 3. The single-phase circuit of passive filtex

i. 5
~~

1
7WOL, =- (4)
7woc3

In the above equations, wo is the source Figure 4. The equivalent circuit of injecting harmonic current of
active filter
fundamental angular fiequency.
For fiindamental frequency, the impedance of L,
and C4 is very small. Even a small fundamental voltage
presented on the secondary side of the coupling
transformer will cause a large current in L, - C4 branch.
Under serious condition, over-current is probable to
happen and bnm L, or C,, . So the active part in this
hybrid filter topology is not used to compensate
fundamental reactive power. Fundamental reactive L J

compensation is fulfilled by passive filter statically. Figure 5. The principle of operation for hybrid active filter in the
F i g 4 shows the equivalent circuit looking from the single phase
active filter, provided that the system impedance is
compensation of reactive power and suppression of
neglected. For the second harmonic, L , , C4 and C, harmonic at the same time in the power substation.
compose parallel resonance circuit, and their parallel
impedance at the second hamonic frequency will be
veiy large. So the current iujected into C, by active
filter will be very low, but not zero, because L, , C, and
C, are not designed to resonant at the second harmonic
frequency exactly. So the active part in this hybrid filter
topology is not efficient to compensate second harmonic. (7)
The second hamonic can only be compensated by the
second passive filter.
B. Control and analysis ofthe active filter
For the fifth harmonic, the impedance of L, , C4 at The single-phase equivalent principle diagram of the
fifth harmonic fi-equencycan be obtained by the (9,and hybrid active filter is shown in Fig.5, in which ZCl is the
the impedance of C, at fifth harmonic can be obtained
impedance of the capacitor C, , .Z4 is the series
by the (6). So the proportion of the currents between C,
and the auxiliary winding of the transformer can be equivalent impedance of C, and L,, VC is the output
calculated by (7). Put the relative parameters in Table1 harmonic voltage of the active filter, V, and i, are the
into the (7), 1.143 is got. And the ratio will be closer to voltage and current of the main feeder respectively. The
unit as the harmonic fiequency increases. That means load is represented by a current source i, in parallel
most of the Iiarmonic current produced by active filter
can be injected into the main feeder through coupling with an equivalent resistor. The load together with the
fifth and seventh passive filter is thought as a two-port
transformer and C,. Therefore the proposed active filter
net, whose current is denoted by i', . The subscriptsf
in Fig.2 can improve the filtering performance of the
passive filter, which will be very suitable for the and h of the variants in Fig.5 denote fundamental and
harmonic components respectively.

217
 To suppress the haimonic currents in the main feeder,
the active filter generates a voltage at the winding of the
coupling transformer with the amplitude value equal to
Vc = K i,sl,
' (8)
In (8), is/] is the line harmonic ciu-rent, which is
obtained by i , - i, algorithm[ 11 1.
In Fig.5, not considering fiindamental current and
providing that the source voltage is pure sinsoidal,
according Kirchlioff s Voltage Law, the loop of Figure 6. The photo of the real equipment
haimonic voltage at steady state can be written as:
K . is,, + Zc-l (ish - i I L / , ) + 2, . ish = 0 (9)
From (9), we can get:

'FS + 'F, 4- i'Lk = jLI1 (11)

According to (10) and (1 l), active filter can improve
the performance of passive filter, and the larger the gain Figure 7. Photo of the high-capacity active power coiiverter
K is, the better the filtering effect is. Moreover the
characteristic of the active filter will be much better for
higher order harmonic current because the higher the
fi-equencyis, the smaller the value o I Zc, is. Besides the
proposed hybrid power filter can also provide certain
reactive compensation capacity by the passive filter.

111. ENGINEERING
APPLICATION
The system shown in Fig.2 has been installed at the
220KV substation in Lianyuari Iron and Steel
Corporation in the Hunan province of P. R. China. The
photo ofthe laboratory device is shown in Fig.6-8. Some Figure 8. Photo ofthe injecting circuit and some meters
parts of the real equipment on the industfial field are
much larger than those of the laborlitoiy device. which is used to filter out switch ripples of lOKHz
produced by the PWM output of the active filter, is
Table I summarizes the specifications of the passive designed at 1OOOHz.
filters, which has the capacity of 12000Kvar for the
fiindamental reactive compensation. Table I1 shows the Typical experimental waveforms are shown in Fig.9.
parameters of the DC voltage supply for the active filter. Fig.9(a) and (b) show the cment waveforms of the main
Table 111 summarizes the specifications of digital control feeder without and with the hybrid power filter
subsystem based on DSP. The digital control subsystem respectively. Fig.9(c) shows the current waveforms of
consists of an A/D unit for sampling three-phase cwents filter branch. It can be clearly seen that the current
synchronously, a DSP unit for calculating the control waveform of the main feeder is greatly improved when
reference and generating PWM control pulse, and a the hybrid power filter is switched on, The experimental
zero-crossing detecting circuit for tracking the frequency data in Table VI-W again verified the effectiveness ofthe
of main feeder. PWM waveform is generated by the proposed active power filter. Before the hybrid active
PWM unit of DSP F240 based on T1, which makes it power filter is switched on, second harmonic and almost
very convenient to get three pairs of PWM impulse with all odd harmonics, up to the twenty-first harmonic,
programmable dead-beat time. Table N shows the exceed the IEEES 19-1992 standard recommended limits,
parameters of the high-c'apacity active power converter the total harmonic distortion THD of the current of the
which consists of six pieces of intelligent IPM modules main feeder is 26.07%; A significant reduction in the
PM600HSA120, twelve pieces of' fast recovery diode main feeder has been obtained by switching on passive
RM 100HG-24s and some non-inductance capacitors filter, it is reduced to 2.13%.
and resistors for snubber circuit to reduce turn-off surge
voltage of the IPM modules. Table V presents the IV. CONCLUSION
specifications of the output LC filter and the coupling A practicable high-capacity hybrid power filter
transformer. The cutoff frequency ofthe output LC filter, composed of active filter and passive filter, one branch

218
 suitable for high-voltage application to improve the
power quality. The experimental results verified the
effectiveness of the proposed system. The developed
hybrid power filter system has been successfully
working in a big Iron and Steel Coiporation in P. R.
China.

REFERENCES

Henderson, R.D., and Rose, P.J., “Harmonic : the eEects on

(a) Current wa\ efonn of the niain feeder power quality and transfomies”, IEEE Trans, 1994, IA-30(3),
wthout the hybrid power filter PP.528-532
Singh, B., Haddad, K,A., and Chandra,A., “A review of active .
filter for power quality improvement”, IEEE Trans.. 1990. IE-46,
(5). pp. 960-971
Rivas, L. Moran, J. Dixon and J. Espinoza., “A simple control
scheme for active power filter”, IEE Proc-Gene;. Transm.
Distrib., Vo1.149, No. 4, July 2002. pp.485-490
L. Jou, J. C . Wu and K. D.Wu., “Parallel operation of passive
power filter and hybrid power filter for harmonic suppression”,
IEE Proc-Gener. Transm. Distrib., Vol.148, No. 1, January 2001.
pp.8-14
H. Akagi, “ Control strategy and site selection of a shunt active
filter for daniping ofhamionic propagation in power distribution
(b) Current waveform of the main feeder systems”, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, Vol. 12, pp. -754-363.
with the hybrid power filter Feb. 1997
B. Bingh, B. N. Singh, A. Chandra, and K. Al-Haddad, “ Real
time DSP based implementation of a new control method. of
active power filter”, in Proc. 1998 IEEE Can. Conf. Elect.
’
Comput. Eng., Vol. 2, 1998, pp. 794-797
P. Jintakosonwit, H. Fujita, H. Akagi., “Control and
perfomiance of a fully-digital-control shunt active filter for
installation on a power distribution system”, IEEE Trans. On
Power Electronic, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2002, pp.132-140
J. Hafner, M. Aredes, and K. Heumann, “ A shunt active power
filter applied to high voltage distribution lines”, IEEE Trans.
Power Delivery, Vol. 12, pp.266-272, Jan.1997
Bhattacharya, S., Cheng, P.T., and Divan, D.M., ‘‘Hybrid
Solutions for Improving Passive Filter Performance in High
(c) Current wavefonii of the filter branch Powcr Applications”, IEEE Trans., 1997. IS-33,(3), PP.732-747
Figure 9. Typical experimental current wavefomis [lo] A. M. Al-Zaniil and D. A. Torrey., “A passive senes. active
shunt filter for lligli power applications”, EEE Trans. On Power
of whose also works as the injecting circuit interface of Electronic, Vol. 16, No. 1, January 2001. pp.101-109
the active filter, has been presented and analyzed. It was [l I] Vasco Soares, Pedro Verdeho and Gil Marques, “Active power
proved that the proposed hybrid power filter has the filter control circuit based on the instantaneous active and
ability to suppress haimoiiic current and compensate reactive current id - i, method”, IEEE IAS Annual meeting,
pp.1096-1101. 1997
reactive power simultaneously, while the power rating
requirement of the active filter is very low. It is very

T-413LE 1. SPEClFICAnONS OF THE PASSIVE FILTER

2th L, =30.38nW500A ci=333.85 p Fl14KV c4=111.28 p F/6KV 4332

5th L, =3.36nlH/500A c2=120.7 p F/12KV 4334
7th L, =1.52nW500A c,=140 ,U F/12KV 4334

TABLE 11. SPECIFICATIONSOF THE DC VOLTAGE SUPPLY

DC-link capacitor 80000 p F/lOOOV
supply voltage 38OV/4OOKW
three phase full-bridge rectifier 1200V/1000A

219
 TABLE 111. SPECIFICATIONS OF THE DIGITAL CONTROL SUBSYSTEM

Microprocessor TMS320 F240 DSP, 12 PWM Channels

MAXI ZSCEAX, 4 Sinlultaneous-Sampling T/H Amplifier, Troughput: 1OOksps(3 channels)

A/ID
High-speed Parallel DSP Interface(14hits with the highest hit as the flag hit)

Opto-coupler HCPI.4504

TABLE W . SPECIFICATIONS OF THE HIGH-CAPACITY ACTIVE POWER CONVERTER

IPM PM600HSA120
fast recovery diode 120OV/1OOA
non-inductance capacitors 1.37 p F/1200V
non-inductance resistors 36 Q /lOOW

.1AL31,1:1' SPECIFICATIONS OF THE OUTPUT L c FILTER AND THE COUPLING

TRANSFORMER

Inductor lmH/ 500A

Capacitor 30 ,U FilOOOV
Coiipling traiisfomier 1000V/500V, 400KVN1500Hz

TABLE VI. CURRENT R M S OF TYPICAL ORDER HARMONICS

RMS Ith 2tli 5th 7th 11th 13th 17th 19th

i, \ 79.92 2.50 15.17 10.46 5.89 4.85 3.23 2 89

is 80.32 0.53 0.63 0.56 0.79 0.70 0.68 0.61

i, 8.23 2.47 15.14 10.33 5.65 4.52 2 85 2.46

TABLE VII. CURRENT THD OF TYPICAL ORDER HARMONICS

THD ltlr 2th 5th 7th Iltli 13th 17th 19th Total THD
i, 100% 3.1% 18.98% 13.09% 7.37% 6.07% 4.04% 3.62% 26.07%

I, 100% 0.66% 0.78% 0.70% 0.98% 0.87% 0.85% 0.76% 2.13%

220