An investigation on combined operation of active power filter with photovoltaic arrays

In this paper, the combined operation of the active power filter with the photovoltaic generation system has been studied. The proposed system consists of a PV power plant, a DC–DC boost converter, and an active power filter. A novel control strategy for the DC–DC converter has been developed in order to extract the maximum amount of power from PV arrays. Also, a novel control strategy, which is based on generalized instantaneous reactive power theory, has been proposed for the active power filter. The simulation results, based on PSCAD/EMTDC, show that the proposed system can provide the power factor correction, load balancing, harmonic elimination, reactive power compensation and simultaneously inject the maximum power available from the PV array into the grid.

► Novel control system for combined operation of active power filters with PV generation system.
► The controller designs for different operation modes of active power filter have been studied.
► Controllers to transfer the PV power and synchronize the output converters with the grid.
► Simulations in power factor correction, harmonics suppression and reactive power compensation.
► FFT analysis is less than 5% in compliance with IEEE-519 and IEC 61000-3 harmonic standards.