Analysis and implementation of three-phase power quality compensator under the balanced and unbalanced load conditions

An active power filter with asymmetric inverter legs are presented to eliminate harmonics, compensate reactive power and draw the balanced line current from the AC source under balanced and unbalanced load conditions. Three inverter legs are used in the adopted voltage source inverter. In each leg, four active switches are adopted to achieve three-level pulse-width modulation (PWM). No clamped diode or flying capacitor is used in the proposed inverter. In the adopted control algorithm, a classical proportional-integral voltage controller and hysteresis current controller are used to maintain DC-link voltage constant and to track line current commands, respectively. A voltage compensator is added in the inner control loop to compensate the neutral point voltage variation due to load variation. Based on the proposed PWM control scheme, a three-level voltage pattern is generated on the AC terminal of the inverter. The system configuration and mathematical analysis are discussed in the paper. Finally, the experimental results based on a laboratory scaled down prototype are provided to verify the effectiveness of the control algorithm.