A Fully Digital Vector Current Control of Three Phase Shunt Active Power Filters

A. Kheloui, K. Aliouane, K. Marouani, F. Khoucha

UER Electrotechnique, ENITA

BP 17 Bordj-El-Bahri, Algiers, Algeria
Fax : +213 21 86 32 04

-
Abstract The most important issues in implementing shunt
active power filters are to obtain accurate information about
harmonic currents, and to inject the appropriate compensating
currents into the ac lines. This paper presents a space vector
control technique of the compensating currents with low
switching frequency. The proposed control strategy and the
computation method of the current references, based on
instantaneous reactive power theory, are entirely performed
digitally in a PC-based control system.
I. INTRODUCTION
selection of zero voltage vectors in the control signals of the:
power converter [5,6,7].
The present paper presents a digital current controller
based on space vector theory. In contrast to the classical^
three-independent hysteresis controllers, the three current
errors are regrouped into a single space vector quantity. In
this case, limiting the magnitude of this error vector within EL
boundary area of particular shape and regularly selecting
zero voltage vectors contribute to considerably reducing the:
mean switching frequency of the power inverter.

The widespread use of power electronics in domestic and 11. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SHUNT ACTIVE
industrial applications had induced power line losses and POWER FILTER
electrical interference problems, which resulted in low power
factor, efficiency and bad quality of the power electrical Figure 1 shows the general structure of the shunt active:
distribution system. power filter. The non-linear load, considered as the source of’
Classical solutions use passive filters, made up of harmonic pollution, is here a six-pulse diode rectifier
capacitors and inductors, to reduce line current harmonics connected to the ac mains. The active filter power circuit is a.
and to compensate reactive power. But these filters have three phase voltage source inverter made up of six
several drawbacks: risk of parallel and series resonance with semiconductor switches and three inductors used to smooth.
the AC source, bulky passive components, and low current variations.
flexibility due to fixed compensation characteristics.
An alternative solution is to use active power filters,
especially the shunt filter, which is the most suitable for
harmonic current elimination and reactive power
compensation [l]. The basic idea of shunt active power
filtering is to connect in parallel with the AC mains a
controlled current source, which injects the compensating
currents into the AC lines to cancel automatically the
harmonic currents generated by the polluting load. The
resulting line currents can, therefore, follow the shape of the
ac voltage with a zero-phase shift. This solution is carried out
in practical by a current controlled voltage source inverter
(VSI), in association with a calculation unit of the .. ..
.. ..
i .

compensating currents and a regulation unit of the dc

.. :..
: :
:
capacitor voltage [2]. :
:
::
:
! j
The active filter currents are characterised by a high .::
.
Current
..
.
harmonic content and by sharp transitions. Three-phase . ....
hysteresis comparators are generally used to control the
voltage source inverter output currents for their simplicity of
implementation and their robustness [3]. But their major
drawback is that the switching frequency spreads out over a
i .
wide range of frequencies and depends on load conditions Compensating DC voltage
[4]. Since maximum inverter switching frequency is a current calculation control unit
limiting factor, in particular in high power levels, recent
works are focusing on limiting this factor by appropriate
Fig. 1 . General structure of the shunt active power filter

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 The calculation unit processes the appropriate vectors, forming an hexagon centred at the origin of the ap
compensating current references for the current control unit, reference frame, and two zero voltage vectors, as shown in
which assures that the voltage source inverter generates the figure 4.
specified counter-harmonic currents and achieves the desired i~a,iLb, i k Vm vb, vc vdc
power factor. I I I
Since there is no need to a dc source, a dc voltage
regulation unit is necessary to compensate the voltage
fluctuations across the dc capacitor due to the VSI power
losses.
The determination of the counter-harmonic current
references is generally based on the instantaneous reactive
reactive power calculation
power theory. The basic idea is that the ac power source
must deliver only the dc part of the instantaneous active
power to the load. The remaining ac part is thus supplied by
the voltage source inverter. The method consists, then, to
calculate the harmonic components of the instantaneous
active and reactive power flowing into the load, from the
current and voltage measurements in the ac side of the load,
to derive the appropriate counter-harmonic current
references. The calculation is performed in the ap stationary
reference frame.
The load currents and the ac side voltages are measured references calculation
and transformed into ap components. The instantaneous
active and reactive power components flowing into the load
are given by the following expressions: *
.*
1FU
Fig.2. Calculation scheme for compensating current references

Where pdc, qdcare the dc components and P h , qh the

harmonic components of active and reactive power
respectively.
The compensating currents are derived from (1):

Where the harmonic components, P h and qh, are

previously extracted by high-pass filters. The term pc is the
amount of active power that must be added to keep the dc
capacitor voltage at its pre-set value. It is obtained from the Fig.3. Electrical scheme of the Voltage source invertel
dc voltage regulation loop, which is generally based on a P
simple PI regulator [8]. A
The practical process of the compensating current
calculation shown on figure 2 requires many multiplication
and addition operations. In this paper, the complete
calculation process is performed numerically into a real-time
PC-based control system.

111. SPACE VECTOR CURRENT CONTROL STRATEGY - 001 101-

VS v6
The voltage source inverter under study is illustrated in Fig.4. Voltage source inverter vectors in the ap plane
figure 3. The switching functions Sa, Sb and Sc,
corresponding to the three inverter legs respectively, assume
eight switching configurations, resulting in six voltage space

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 Since the neutral of the ac mains is isolated, the voltage The load voltage vector in (6) is defined as follows:
equations at the output of the inverter legs are given by the
following expressions: - d7; -
E=L-+V (7)
dt

The expression (6) shows clearly that the variation of the

current error vector QF can be controlled by a suitable
choice of the inverter voltage vector according to the position
of the load voltage vector. In fact, for a non-zero voltage
vector application, the current error can be driven into a
small boundary area. However, for a zero-voltage vector
application, the load voltage vector only governs the
evolution of G F . Therefore, to avoid loose of
controllability, the selection of zero-voltage vectors, which is
needed to reduce switching frequency, must be done only
when it is certain that the load voltage vector action has the
VSa =L-+v,
diFa
natural tendency to push the error vector tip towards the
dt boundary area. This can be easily verified by checking up on
(4)
dim both conditions:
vsp =L- dt VP +

The transformed variables in (4) are expressed as follows:

In fact, when both current error components and their

respective derivatives are of opposite signs, there is no need
to apply an active voltage vector, the load can be left free-
running since current error trajectory is naturally converging
in the right direction, that is towards the hysteresis boundary
area.
If conditions (8) are not matched, it is necessary, then, to
apply a suitable voltage vector to reverse the natural
tendency of the current error trajectory. Hence, the selection
of the active voltage vectors depends on the position of the
current error vector in the ap plane.
Figure 5 shows the four possible locations of the error

rr1=qo &I2 -&I21

vector tip, outside the hysteresis boundary area, and, for each
position, its four possible natural trajectory tendencies
Where -lI2 -lI2 represented by major directions numbered from 1 to 4. It
results in sixteen possible configurations, for each of them
corresponds a suitable voltage vector capable of driving the
It is preferable to write (4) in a condensed form by using
error vector tip towards the boundary area. Again, it is easy
space vector representation:
to find out that the zero-voltage vector selection can be
activated only when the tendency of the error vector
- djF - trajectory is naturally orientated towards the boundary area, a
V s =Vsa+jVsp=L-+V
dt situation which is represented in figure 5, for all error vector
locations, by the direction n"4.
Where 7= Va +jVp and IF = iFa + j i m To understand the selection rule of the non-zero voltage
vectors, let us take, for instance, the first location that
In the same way, if we introduce the current reference corresponds to the case where both current error ap-
vector, j ; = i& +j i & , in (9,
we find the equation which components are positive. The table, shown at the left side of
the figure, gives the switching rule for the four possible
governs the evolution of the current error vector, d ~in the
, natural directions of the vector error trajectory
ap plane:

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 For direction no1, which corresponds to a-component
decrease and P-component increase, and for direction n02,
Natural trajectory which corresponds to both a and p components increase, the
fastest way to move the error vector back to the delimited
area is to activate the voltage vector v2 . In the same way,
for direction n"3, which corresponds, to a-component
a increase and P-component decrease, the best choice is q.
As a result, 6 is solicited only when the a-component error
I boundarv area is moving alone in the wrong direction, since it has no effect
on P-component variables. Otherwise, that is when the p-
component is increasing, the vector 2 r is the best choice
because it is the most closely to the p-axis.
Same considerations work for the three other situations.
However, it remains to see how to detect the current error's
natural tendency, due to load voltage action only. It is simply
given by the sign of its derivative, when the load is in free-
running mode. In fact, the equation (6) shows clearly that the
effect of the load voltage on the current error dynamics can
be observed only when zero-voltage vectors are applied. In
that case, the sign of the current error derivative is an
indication of the tendency of the current error. It is important
to note that there is no need to evaluate the amplitude of the
error derivative. It is therefore very simple to perform this
task.
The selection between the two zero-voltage vectors is
determined in a way to minimise the switching frequency, by
adopting the principle to switch only one inverter leg at once.
P

.* S
W
b
I
T
C
H
I
N
G
P
A T
A
a
B
L
E

Fig.5. Current error vector locationsand associated switchingtable Fig. 6 . Current controllerscheme

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 IV. PC-BASED DIGITAL CONTROL SYSTEM obtained when the active power filter is used to eliminate the
IMPLEMENTATION harmonic currents generated by the rectifier in order to have
ac source currents with sinusoidal waveform.
The complete current control method, shown on figure 6,
and the counter-harmonic current computation are both
implemented on a PC-based digital control system via a
plug-in multi-input/output data acquisition board.
Figure 7 shows a schematic diagram of the experimental
system set up in our laboratory. It is built around an IGBT-
based voltage source inverter and a PC-based digital
controller. Hall effect sensors perform all the current and
voltage measurements. They are filtered, conditioned and
then introduced, in real-time, into a Pentium-PC via the
analog inputs of a plug-in data acquisition board (AT-MIO-
16X DAQ from National Instruments). The counter-
harmonic computation algorithm and the current control
algorithm are implemented using C language. The PC-based
digital controller via the digital outputs of the DAQ board
generates the control signals of the inverter’s interrupters.
v 5ee.N gpe.enst+
Load 1 1.e~
500. IV
autonatiqu

Fig.8. From top to bottom load ac current (ZNdiv), ac source current

(3Ndiv) and active filter current (1Ndiv)

Power control
interface

Sensors

Fig.9. From top to bottom ac line current (3Ndiv), active filter current
(1 Ndiv) and inverter ac voltage (1 OOV/div)
..’. DAQ Board

The inverter output voltage shows that the switching

Fig.7. PC-based Control system diagram
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed current control strategy was tested on a
diode rectifier feeding an R-L load and absorbing a non-
linear ac current rated at 2A rms. DC capacitor voltage was
rated at 250V and the ac mains at 11OVrms. The hysteresis
band was fixed at f 0.1A. The sampling frequency was rated
at 1OKhz. Figure 8 and 9 shows the experimental results
frequency is relatively low and doesn’t exceed a maximum
of 2Khz.
Figure 10 and 11 show the harmonic spectrums of load iic
current and ac source current respectively. It is well known
that diode rectifiers generate important amounts of 5 I h and ?rh
harmonic orders. The compensating action of the active
power filter reduces considerably these major harmonic
components and contributes then to make the ac source
currents sinusoidal as it is shown on figures 8 and 9. Tine
harmonic spectrum analysis is performed off-line using a
DFT algorithm.

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 o.zr I

0 16- 0.18/
0.16

0.14 - 0.14 1
0 12- 0.12 -

0.1 - 01-

0.08 -

Fig. 10. Load ac current harmonic spectrum versus frequency (Hz) Fig. 1 1. Ac source current harmonic spectrum versus frequency (Hz)

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a vector current control method tested on a
three-phase shunt active power filter used to compensate
load current harmonics was presented. The control method,
based on an appropriate zero-voltage vector selection, was
implemented digitally on a PC-based control system. The
experimental results showed good effectiveness with a
limited switching frequency.
VII. REFERENCES
[I] A. Ametani, “Harmonic reduction in thyristor converters by harmonic
current injection”, IEEE Trans. on Power App. Syst., Vol. PAS-95, nO2,
1976.
[2] H. Akagi, Y.Kanazawa, and A. Nabae, “Instantaneous reactive power
compensators comprising switching devices without energy storage
components”, IEEE Trans. on Ind. Appl., Vol. IA-20, pp.625, 1984.
[3] M.P. Kazmierkowski and L. Malesani, “Current control techniques for
three phase voltage source PWM converters : A survey”, IEEE Trans.
on Ind. Electronics, Vol. 45, pp.691-703, 1998.
[4] J. Holtz, “Pulse width modulation for electronic power conversion”,
Proc. of EEE, Vol. 82, n”8, pp. 1194-12 14, 1994.
[5] A.E. Romeral, J.L. Arias, and, A. Bedford, “A new vector control
hysteresis-band current controller for three phase loads”, Proc. of the
European Conf. on Power Electronics, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1999.
[6] J. Svensson, and R. Ottersten, “Shunt Active Filtering of Vector
Current-Controlled VSC at a Moderate Switching Frequency”, IEEE
Trans. on Ind. Appl., Vol. 35, n05, pp. 1083-2000, Sept./Oct. 1999.
[7] A. Nava-Segura, and J. Linares-Flores, ‘Transient analysis of a vector
controlled active filter”, Proc. of the IEEE Conf. on Ind. Appl., Roma,
Italy, 2000.
[8] F.Z.Peng, H. Akagi, and A. Nabae, “A study of active power filters
using quad series voltage-source PWM converters for harmonic
compensation”, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, Vol. 5 , nO1,pp.9-14,
1990.

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