Electrical Engineering in Japan, Vol. 136, No.

2, 2001
Translated from Denki Gakkai Ronbunshi, Vol. 120-D, No. 5, May 2000, pp. 694700

Transient Power Characteristics of Balanced Three-Phase Variable Inductance

HIROHITO FUNATO,1 KENZO KAMIYAMA,1 and ATSUO KAWAMURA2

1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Utsunomiya University, Japan
2
Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University, Japan

SUMMARY variable inductance applicable to power circuits [1, 2]. One

of the notable features of the VAPAR is that the generated
Inductance has a particularly important role in inductance can be varied quickly. The realization of a
power circuits. The authors have proposed the Variable variable inductance applicable to power circuits can be
ActivePassive Reactance (VAPAR), which can produce expected to open new applications. As an example of new
a virtual variable inductance. In this paper, the transient applications, power flow control using variable inductance
power characteristics of a balanced three-phase variable has been proposed in Refs. 3 and 4. Variable inductances
inductance are analyzed using the instantaneous active have been used for frequency modulation and the like in the
and reactive power theorem. With an ideal voltage source field of communications engineering. There is, however, no
or an ideal current source connected to a balanced three- analysis of the use of variable inductances in power circuits,
phase variable inductance, the transient power charac- so far as the authors are aware.
teristics are analyzed theoretically, and then the results In this paper, the transient characteristics of a
are verified through simulations. In the other cases, it is three-phase variable inductance are analyzed by means
difficult to solve for the transient power, but it is shown of the instantaneous active and reactive power theorem
that the transient power characteristics can easily be from the viewpoint of application in power circuits. First,
estimated from the results of simulations in which an the voltagecurrent relationship of a single variable in-
ideal voltage source or an ideal current source is con- ductance will be described. Then the realization of a
nected to a balanced three-phase variable inductance. variable inductance by VAPAR will be explained. Sec-
Experiments are also carried out to verify the theoretical ond, the transient power of a three-phase inductance will
analysis and simulations. 2001 Scripta Technica, be considered. A circuit including a variable inductance
Electr Eng Jpn, 136(2): 4957, 2001 is a linear but time-varying system so that a general
theoretical analysis is difficult. In this paper, the theoreti-
cal instantaneous active and reactive power of balanced
Key words: Three-phase inductance; variable in- three-phase inductance when connected to a voltage or a
ductance; instantaneous reactive power; electronic load current source will be considered. The theoretical solu-
simulator. tions will be verified through simulations. It will be
shown that the general cases can be inferred from a
theoretical analysis of the voltage or current connection.
Experimental verification of the theoretical analysis and
1. Introduction
simulations will also be described.
Inductance has a particularly important role in power
circuits. It is useless in some circuits, for example the 2. Variable Inductance
leakage inductance of electric motors and transformers. In
other circuits, inductance is used effectively, for example 2.1 Characteristics of variable inductance
the dc reactor in a rectifier.
The authors have proposed the Variable ActivePas- Consider a variable inductance as shown in Fig. 1.
sive Reactance (VAPAR), which can generate a virtual The voltage v and current i of a variable inductance Lvt
which is composed of real winding follow the well-known
Contract grant sponsor: TEPCO Research Foundation. equation

2001 Scripta Technica

49
 (1)

where ) is the flux linkage. The voltage and current of a

time-invariant inductor are expressed by the following
equation because the inductance L is fixed:

The voltagecurrent relationship of a variable inductance

Lvt, however, should be expressed as in Eq. (1) because Fig. 2. Realization of variable inductance using Variable
Lv is a function of time. Henceforth, in this paper, Lv ActivePassive Reactance (VAPAR).
denotes a variable inductance and (t) indicating a function
of time will be omitted.

2.2 Realization of variable inductance

voltagecurrent relationship at one port [5, 6]. Therefore,
There are several methods to realize a variable induc- we cannot distinguish clearly whether the current is an input
tance with real winding, such as making the core movable and the voltage is an output or vice versa. In particular, the
by an external force. The change of inductance is equivalent condition of stability is quite different from that of a transfer
to the change of flux with the same current. function. The driving point impedance function becomes
On the other hand, the authors have proposed the stable when all zeros and poles are on the left half of the
VAPAR [1], which generates a virtual inductance. Figure 2 complex plane. (See Appendix and Refs. 79.)
shows the basic composition of the VAPAR, which consists The driving point impedance of the VAPAR com-
of a controlled voltage source and an interconnecting in- posed as shown in Fig. 3 can be calculated by Eq. (3) when
ductor. The voltage source is controlled so that the relation- a PI controller is employed as a current controller. In this
ship of the terminal voltage and current becomes an equation, Lo is the interconnecting inductance, Ro is the
inductance Lv. resistance of the interconnecting inductor, and K and W are
In a real circuit, a voltage source is replaced by a the gain and the time constant of the PI controller, respec-
voltage source inverter as shown in Fig. 3. The control tively:
algorithm is as follows. The current reference iref is calcu-
lated from the terminal voltage vt as follows. (3)

(2) Zv behaves as the desired inductance Lv up to a certain

frequency. Above this frequency, the magnitude and phase
of the driving point impedance vary, and the driving point
Next, a virtual inductance can be realized by making the
terminal current it follow iref.
The VAPAR generates a virtual reactance, so that the
characteristics and stability of the VAPAR can be estimated
by its driving point impedance. The driving point imped-
ance is different from a transfer function, expressing the

Fig. 1. Variable inductance. Fig. 3. Actual implementation of VAPAR.

50
impedance becomes inductance Lo at very high frequencies. simulations. In the remainder of this section, the following
In this paper, the parameters of the controller will be de- assumptions are considered for simplicity:
cided by trial and error so that the driving point impedance
becomes stable. Therefore, in the following theoretical 1. The circuit under consideration becomes steady-
analysis, the VAPAR is assumed to be an ideal variable state before the inductance change of the balanced three-
inductance. phase variable inductance.
Integrating the voltage equation of a variable induc- 2. The amplitude and phase of the voltage or current
tance as expressed by Eq. (1), we obtain source do not change.

(4) These assumptions are regarded as sufficiently practical so

long as the application to an electrical power system is
considered.
Dividing both terms by Lv, we can obtain a function which
has the same form as Eq. (2). Therefore, Eq. (2) can be used
3.1 Variable inductance connected to voltage
even when Lv changes, and consequently a virtual induc-
source
tance can be realized by making the terminal current it
follow the current reference iref. Consider a balanced three-phase variable inductance
connected to a three-phase voltage source [vu, vv, vw]T
3. Instantaneous Power Characteristics of Balanced [EmsinZt, EmsinZt  23 S, EmsinZt  43 S]T as shown in
Three-Phase Variable Inductance Fig. 5(a). The source voltage can be transformed to two-
phase form (DE coordinates) as follows:
Consider a balanced three-phase variable inductance
as shown in Fig. 4. The instantaneous active and reactive
power theorem (pq theory) [10] can be applied to the
(5)
terminal voltage vt and current i of this three-phase induc-
tance if the whole circuit including the three-phase induc-
tance is a balanced three-phase circuit. Applying a
three-phase sinusoidal voltage, active power becomes zero
and reactive power is in proportion to the current amplitude
at steady state if the inductance is fixed.
On the other hand, the general analysis of a circuit
including a time-varying inductance is difficult because the
circuit is a time-varying system. Therefore, initially the
theoretical power of a balanced three-phase variable induc-
tance will be analyzed when a three-phase voltage source
or a three-phase current source is connected as shown in
Figs. 5(a) and 5(b). The theoretical analyses will be verified
by simulations. More general cases are considered through

Fig. 5. Simulation circuit for balanced three-phase

Fig. 4. Balanced three-phase variable inductance. variable inductance.

51
The instantaneous active power pv and reactive power qv Substituting Eq. (8) for iD, iE in Eq. (9), pi and qi can be
flowing into the three-phase inductance are expressed by calculated as follows:
the following equation, where [iD, iE] are the currents in DE
coordinates:
(10)

The transient power characteristics can be summarized as

(6) follows when a current source is connected to a balanced
three-phase variable inductance:

Substituting Eq. (5) for vD, vE in Eq. (6), pv and qv are 1. The instantaneous active power changes only dur-
expressed by the following equation, since dc components ing the inductance change and is proportional to the time
can be neglected based on assumption 1) above: derivative of the inductance.
2. The instantaneous reactive power varies in propor-
tion to the inductance.
(7)
The above results are summarized in Table 1.

From the above equation, the transient power charac-

3.3 Simulations with a voltage or current
teristics can be summarized as follows when a voltage
source is connected to a balanced three-phase variable source connected
inductance:
Simulations were carried out to verify the theoretical
1. The instantaneous active power never changes analysis described in the previous section. The simulated
even when the inductance changes. circuits are as shown in Figs. 5(a) and 5(b). The balanced
2. The instantaneous reactive power varies inversely three-phase variable inductances are realized by the VAPAR
with the inductance. composed of the circuit shown in Fig. 3. The PWM voltage
source inverter is replaced by an ideal voltage source in the
3.2 Variable inductance connected to current simulations. Figure 6 shows simulation results, where vs is
the source voltage in phase u, i is the current, and vt is the
source
terminal voltage of the VAPAR. In the simulations, the
Consider a balanced three-phase variable inductance inductance is changed from 5 mH to 10 mH at t = 0.02 s
connected to a three-phase current source and from 10 mH to 5 mH at t = 0.06 s. The duration of the
[iu, iv, iw]T [ImsinZt, ImsinZt  23 S, ImsinZt  43 S]T inductance change is 2 ms, and therefore the slope of
as shown in Fig. 5(b). The source current can be trans- inductance is dLv / dt r2.5 H/s. The amplitude of the volt-
formed to two-phase form (DE coordinates) as follows: age source is 10 V in Fig. 6(a) and the amplitude of the
current source is 2 A in Fig. 6(b). The frequency is 50 Hz
in both cases. It is clear that the simulation results agree
(8) well with the theoretical analysis.

In this case, the instantaneous active power pi and reactive

power qi flowing into the three-phase inductance are ex- Table 1. Power characteristics of balanced three-phase
pressed by the following equation, where [vtD, vtE] are the variable inductance
terminal voltages of the three-phase inductance in DE coor-
Active power Reactive power
dinates:
With voltage No charge Inverse proportion
source to inductance
With current Proportion to Proportion to
(9) source change of inductance
inductance

52
 Fig. 6. Simulation results of power response of balanced three-phase variable inductance
(connected with ideal voltage and current source).

3.4 Transient power characteristics of they can be estimated from the theoretical results when a
balanced three-phase variable inductance voltage or current source is connected, according to the
in a more general case condition of the circuit. Figure 7 shows the simulation
results for the circuit shown in Fig. 5(c). In Figs. 7(a) and
Consider a balanced three-phase variable inductance 7(b), Rx is 25 : which is somewhat larger than the imped-
connected to a three-phase voltage source with a series ance of the variable inductance generated by the VAPAR (5
three-phase resistance as shown in Fig. 5(c). In this case, it mH:1.57 : at 50 Hz, 10 mH:3.14 : at 50 Hz) so that a
is difficult to solve for the active and the reactive power of similar response to the case in which a current source is
a three-phase variable inductance analytically. However, connected can be obtained. The difference between Figs.

Fig. 7. Simulation results of power response of balanced three-phase variable inductance

(connected to voltage source with external impedance).

53
7(a) and 7(b) is the speed of inductance change. When the
speed is slow, we can observe waveforms more similar to
the case in which a current source is connected. In Fig. 7(c),
Rx is 2.5 :, which is almost the same as the impedance of
the variable inductance. In this case, a response intermedi-
ate between the case of connection to a voltage source and
that of connection to a current source can be observed.

4. Experiments

In order to verify the theoretical analysis and simula-

tions, experiments were carried out using a VAPAR control-
led by a DSP-based digital controller. The experimental
equipment is shown in Fig. 8, where the areas enclosed by
dotted lines are the VAPARs. The three VAPARs are con-
nected to the external circuit by insulated transformers.
They are controlled by one DSP-based (TI TMS320C32)
digital controller which is expressed as the area enclosed
by the dot-dashed line. The sampling frequency and the
carrier frequency are 12 kHz. The DSP-based digital con-
troller computes the instantaneous active and reactive
power of the balanced three-phase variable inductance. The
parameters are as shown in Fig 7.

Fig. 9. Experimental results of power response of

Fig. 8. Experimental system. balanced three-phase variable inductance.

54
 Figure 9 shows the experimental results. Panel (a)
corresponds to the simulation shown in Fig. 6(a). Panels
(b) and (c) correspond to Figs. 7(a) and 7(b), respec-
tively. In the experimental results, the reactive power q
Fig. 10. Circuit which has voltage transfer function.
is shown reversed for convenience of measurement.
Some ripples can be observed in the experimental wave-
form due to the switching ripples of the inverter, and in
addition there are some distortions in the power response
due to the harmonics of the utility. However, the experi- such as a two-port circuit and feedback control system.
mental results agree well with the theoretical analysis Therefore, we cannot distinguish clearly whether the cur-
and simulation. rent is an input and the voltage is an output, or vice versa.
Considering a feedback speed control system, the speed
5. Conclusions reference is always the input and the real speed is always
the output. In another case such as the two-port circuit as
This paper has dealt with the transient power charac- shown in Fig. 10, we can derive a transfer function G which
teristics of a balanced three-phase variable inductance real- is the ratio of the output to an isolated input. In contrast,
ized by a VAPAR which is applicable to power circuits. The consider a one-port element such as an inductance with
summary findings are as follows. a driving point impedance function Z NZ / DZ connected
to a current source I as shown in Fig. 11(a). The terminal
1. The concept of variable inductance and its basic voltage V is
characteristics compared to fixed inductance has been dem-
onstrated.
2. The transient power characteristics of a balanced (11)
three-phase variable inductance connected to a three-phase
voltage or a three-phase current source have been analyzed The current I is determined as a function of the current
theoretically. The results are summarized in Table 1. source. The voltage V is determined from the current and
3. In general, the transient power characteristics of the driving point impedance. In this case, the current corre-
a balanced three-phase variable inductance can be esti- sponds to the input and the voltage to the output. The
mated according to the condition of the circuit from the stability of this circuit is judged by the poles of the driving
theoretical results when a voltage or current source is point impedance.
connected. On the other hand, when the voltage source is con-
4. Experiments were performed to verify the theoreti- nected as shown in Fig. 11(b), the current I is given by
cal analyses and simulations.

The following studies will be reported in future papers: (12)

theoretical analyses of general cases, transient analyses in
applications, and optimal design of the VAPAR.
Here the terminal voltage of this inductance equals the
source voltage and the current is determined by the voltage
Acknowledgments and the driving point impedance. The voltage corresponds
to the input and the current to the output in this circuit. The
This work was supported in part by the TEPCO
Research Foundation. The authors would like to thank Mr.
Tetsushi Ohtaki and Mr. Tomonori Ishikawa for their assis-
tance during the experiments.

APPENDIX

Difference between Driving Point Impedance

and Transfer Function

A driving point impedance function expresses the

ratio of the terminal voltage to the terminal current at one Fig. 11. One-port element connected to various external
port. It is different from an inputoutput relationship circuits.

55
stability of this circuit is judged by the zeros of the driving 2. Funato H, Kawamura A, Kamiyama K. Realization
point impedance. of negative inductance using variable activepassive
Thus, in the case of a one-port element, the input reactance (VAPAR). IEEE Trans Power Electron
output relation changes from case to case. In general, we 1997;12:589596.
should consider a circuit in which one port element is 3. Watanabe T, Funato H, Kamiyama K. Power flow
connected to a voltage source with an internal impedance control using variable activepassive reactance (VA-
as shown in Fig. 11(c). When the source impedance Zx is PAR): Comparison with phase shifter. 1997 IEE Ja-
small, this circuit shows a similar response to circuit (a), but pan Annual Meeting, No. 942.
it shows a similar response to circuit (b) when Zx is large. 4. Ishikawa T, Funato H, Ohtaki T, Kamiyama K. Trans-
Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish which (the voltage or mission power control using variable inductance with
current) is the input and which is the output. Thus, a driving feedforward- and feedback-based power controllers.
point impedance function has different characteristics than IEEE Int Conference on Power Electronics and Drive
a transfer function. Systems (PEDS99), Vol. 1, p 4651, Hong Kong.
The stability of a driving point impedance must be 5. Sato T. Electric circuits. Maruzen; 1973. p 9294. (in
considered with special care. As seen from the above exam- Japanese)
ple, both poles and zeros are concerned with stability. 6. Takebe T. Circuit response. Corona Publishing; 1981.
Considering general cases, a driving point impedance func- p 8283. (in Japanese)
tion becomes stable when all zeros and poles are on the left 7. Sato R. Electric circuit theory. Maruzen; 1973. p.
half of the complex plane [79]. 281285. (in Japanese)
8. Takebe T. Circuit response. Corona Publishing; 1981.
p 99100. (in Japanese)
9. Koga T. Circuit synthesis. Corona Publishing; 1981.
REFERENCES
Chapter 3. (in Japanese)
10. Akagi H, Kanazawa Y, Fujita K, Nabae A. General-
1. Funato H, Kawamura A. Activepassive power cir- ized theory of the instantaneous reactive power and
cuit. Trans IEE Japan Ind Appl 1993;113:601610. its applications. Trans IEE Japan 1983;103-B:483
(in Japanese) 490. (in Japanese)

AUTHORS (from left to right)

Hirohito Funato received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Yokohama National University
in 1987, 1989, and 1995. He was affiliated with Tokyo Electric Power Company as a communications engineer from 1989 to
1991. He joined Utsunomiya University in 1995, and is now an associate professor. His research interests include applications
of power electronics, motor drives, active filters, and so on. He is a member of IEEE PELS, IAS, IES, and SICE.

Kenzo Kamiyama received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and Ph.D. degree from Waseda University
in 1959, 1961, and 1983. In 1961 he joined Hitachi Works, Hitachi, Ltd., where he worked on the development of
adjustable-speed dc motor drives for rolling mills. In 1970 he transferred to Omika Works, Hitachi, Ltd., where he worked on
the development of dc and ac motor drives for rolling mills and general industries. He has been responsible for developing
computer-aided design, direct digital simulations, thyristor motor speed regulators, rotor chopper control equipment for
induction motors, and microprocessor-based speed regulators for dc and ac motors. Since 1992 he has been a professor in the
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at Utsunomiya University. His research interests include ac drives and the
application of power electronics to motor drives. He is a member of SICE and a fellow of IEEE.

56
 AUTHORS (continued)

Atsuo Kawamura received his B.S.E.E., M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of
Tokyo in 1976, 1978, and 1981. In 1981 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University
of MissouriColumbia as a postdoctoral fellow, and was an assistant professor there from 1983 through 1986. In 1986 he joined
the faculty of Yokohama National University, where he is now a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. His interests include power electronics, digital control, ultrasonic actuators, electric vehicles, robotics, and so on.
He received an IEEE IAS Transaction Prize Paper Award in 1988, and a Prize Paper Award from IEE Japan in 1996. He is a
senior member of IEEE, IEICE, SICE, and the Robotics Society of Japan.

57