A SINGLE-PHASE POWER SERIES COMPENSATOR FOR VOLTAGE DISTORTION

M. João Sepúlveda Freitas, João L. Afonso, Júlio S. Martins

Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, Portugal

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to describe the 2 ACTIVE POWER FILTERS
work that is being done in the design and
implementation of a single-phase series power Active power filters have several advantages over
compensator for electrical power quality purposes. passive ones: compensation is automatic, there is no
This system is able to compensate several voltage risk of resonances, unity power factor (or any other
related problems in the power grid, namely: voltage value) can be achieved permanently and without
distortion due to harmonics, voltage flicker (sub disturbing the electrical network, they can compensate
harmonics) and over or under voltages. The power for phase unbalance in three-phase electrical systems.
circuit of the series compensator is described in this They can also be combined with passive filters (which
paper, and some experimental results are presented. may be already installed) in hybrid topologies, in order
to diminish their rated power.

1 INTRODUCTION There are basically two types of active power filters:

the shunt active filter, presented in figure 2, which is
Voltage distortion is caused by several factors. Nearby designed to filter line currents; and the series active
non linear loads and some types of voltage sources filter, shown in figure 3, designed to filter mains
(renewable energy sources, for example), are very voltages. It is also possible to combine both topologies
common causes. Power quality problems origin to provide both current and voltage filtering.
instantaneous and long term effects on electrical
equipment. The short term effects are malfunctioning,
interferences and degradation of the performance of
devices or equipments. Effects in the long run are,
basically, overheating and premature aging of the
electric devices.

If non linear loads are connected to the electrical grid,

even if the mains voltage is undistorted, the current
harmonics will cause voltage distortions in the line
impedances, and the voltage at the load terminals will
also be distorted. Figure 1 illustrates this fact. The
harmonics in the line-current (is) produce a non-linear Figure 2: Shunt active power filter.
voltage drop (∆v) in the line impedance, which distorts
the load voltage (vL). Since load voltage is distorted,
even the current at the linear load (iL1) becomes
non-sinusoidal.

Figure 3: Series active power filter.

Figure 1: Voltage distortion due to the presence of a
nearby non linear load. The control system for active power filters is usually
implemented on a microcontroller or on a digital signal
Passive filters can be used to compensate some of the processor (DSP). There are many control algorithms,
mentioned problems, but they have some limitations, providing good results: for instance, the control
namely: they only filter the frequencies for which they algorithms based on the p-q theory may be easily and
have been previously tuned, its operation cannot be efficiently used for controlling active power filters.
limited to a certain load or circuit, resonances can The calculations are done in the time domain, with
occur, and the electrical system can start to operate instantaneous values of voltages and currents, and are
with capacitive power factor. relatively simple [1-5].
3 THE PROPOSED COMPENSATOR Another limitation of these standard multifunction
boards concerns the analogue inputs, since the several
The block diagram of the proposed single phase active channels usually available are multiplexed and share
series compensator for voltage distortion is shown in the same digital to analogue converter, which causes
figure 4, at the end of this paper. the acquisition process to take a major period of time.

The system’s power compensator is constituted by an The reference voltage for voltage compensation is
IGBT single-phase full-bridge inverter, with an always known. Exploring this fact, it is possible to
inductive and capacitive filter on the output. This generate a reference signal and use a proportional and
passive filter feeds an isolation transformer which adds integral control algorithm. In this case, the load
the compensating voltage to the mains voltage, voltage is acquired and compared with the reference
providing an ideally non-distorted voltage to the linear (desired voltage) and a voltage error is generated.
load. The existence of snubber circuits associated to Then, the control system uses the symmetric value of
each IGBT is essential, because the inverter load is the voltage error as compensating voltage to be
highly inductive, causing very high voltage glitches in generated by the filter’s power converter. The
the semiconductors when they turn off. reference signal is synchronized with the mains voltage
and it is generated by the personal computer, intended
The inverter’s power source is a full-bridge diode to obtain a 48.0 V RMS voltage applied to the linear
rectifier with filtering capacitor. Although there is also load. It is also necessary to continuously adjust the
an isolation transformer feeding the rectifier, the controller’s gain to compensate for the voltage drop on
presence of this transformer is not mandatory. If it is the inverter’s direct current voltage source, because it
necessary to do some voltage level transformation, an is unregulated. Further information about the personal
auto-transformer may be used, reducing price and computer based control system and control algorithms,
weight. may be found on given references [6-8].

The main goal of the variable non-linear load in the

experimental layout is to provide an adjustable 4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
non-linear voltage drop on the (exaggerated) line
impedance, causing a changeable voltage distortion on Figure 5 shows a picture with the developed system
the emulated “mains”. There is also a bypass switch operating. The inverter is on the left, the loads are on
which connects the linear load directly to the “mains” the centre and a digital oscilloscope is on the right.
or trough the series compensator.

The control system of this series compensator is

implemented on a personal computer (PC) with a
general purpose multifunction data acquisition board
included in the PCI bus. The major advantages of this
approach are the relative low cost of the equipment,
the high processing capabilities of the personal
computer processor, and its versatility. The personal
computer used has a 733MHz Intel Pentium III
processor with 512MByte memory. The data
acquisition board is the model PCI-MIO-16E-4
manufactured by National Instruments.

The control of a series active filter is a type of

application which requires a fast controller, which
does not lose samples, and where all the maximum Figure 5: Developed series compensator operating.
allowed deadlines must be met each and every time.
These characteristics imply that this application needs Some tests were made to evaluate the series
a hard real-time control system. compensator performance. First, the non-linear load
was adjusted to provide a desired voltage distortion,
A PC implemented controller presents some and the voltage waveforms and output voltage
difficulties. The main problems are related to the spectrum were recorded. Then, the series compensator
standard multitasking operating systems, and can only was connected trough the bypass switch, and the new
be solved by very skilled programmers. Another output voltage waveforms and spectrum were also
problem is the slow data input/output system. These recorded. Pictures 6 to 14 show the most important
boards are connected to the PCI bus and do not take registered waveforms and output voltage spectrums,
advantage of the full processor speed. They are usually before and after voltage compensation. The waveforms
designed to acquire data for monitoring purposes or colours means: brown - distorted mains voltage; red -
process control. Thus, they are very limited when compensating voltage; green - reference signal; blue -
performing hard real-time control. compensated load voltage.
First Test: The non-linear load was adjusted to create Second test: In this case the non-linear load was
a small distortion on the “mains” voltage, causing the adjusted to create a large distortion on the “mains”
voltage to drop to 46.4 V RMS, presenting a total voltage, causing the voltage to drop to 37.2 V RMS,
harmonic distortion (THD) of 4.5 %. Figure 6 shows which represents a 22.5% voltage drop. The “mains”
the waveforms, figure 7 shows the voltage spectrum voltage also presents a very high level of THD:
before compensation, and figure 8 shows the voltage 13.2 %. Figure 9 shows the waveforms, figures 10 and
spectrum after compensation. As can be seen, when 11 show the voltages spectrums.
the bypass switch connects the series compensator, the
voltage amplitude rises to 48.2 V and the THD Now, when the series compensator is connected, the
decreases to 1.3 %. Note that reference signals and voltage amplitude rises to 48.2 V and the THD
output voltages are almost coincident. decreases to 1.8 %.

Figure 6: Most important voltage waveforms for Figure 9: Most important voltage waveforms for
“small voltage distortion”. “large voltage distortion”.

Figure 7: Output voltage spectrum for “small voltage Figure 10: Output voltage spectrum for “large voltage
distortion”, before compensation. distortion”, before compensation.

Figure 8: Output voltage spectrum for “small voltage Figure 11: Output voltage spectrum for “large voltage
distortion”, after compensation. distortion”, after compensation.
Third Test: The non-linear load and the line At the time this test was made, the mains RMS voltage
impedance (see figure 4) were disconnected and the on the secondary of the step down transformer was
system was tested to compensate for the voltage 50.3 V and the THD was 2.4 %. This was the voltage
distortion present on the “real” mains. The voltage applied to the linear load when the series compensator
THD on the laboratory where the tests were performed was disconnected.
varies a little along the day, but it is always around
3 %. This voltage distortion can be easily seen with an Connecting the series compensator, trough the bypass
oscilloscope. Figure 12 shows the voltage waveforms switch, the voltage applied to the linear load becomes
(colour brown - mains voltage), figure 13 shows the 48.5 V RMS (a value closer to the desired value of
voltage spectrum before compensation, and figure 14 48.0 V) and the THD decreases to 0.9 %.
shows the voltage spectrum after compensation.
As it can be seen in pictures 12 to 14, the proposed
series compensator is able to provide a better voltage
waveform than the one available on the power grid,
increasing power quality.

5 CONCLUSION

The p-q theory is very effective and simple to use

when controlling three-phase shunt active power
filters, because the reference signals (desired currents)
are not known and load dependent. Very often, the
mains voltages may be considered non-distorted,
simplifying even more the controller calculations,
because it is not necessary to determine the voltages
fundamental positive sequence.
Figure 12: Most important voltage waveforms for
“line voltage distortion”. The previous assumption is almost always not true
when it concerns to a series active power filter. If the
p-q theory is to be used when compensating voltage
distortion, it is necessary to determine the line currents
fundamental positive sequence. However, the
reference signals (desired voltages) are known,
allowing the use of a simple classical controller
(proportional plus integral, for example).

The proposed single phase series compensator for

voltage distortion reduces effectively the voltage total
harmonic distortion, providing better power quality
than it is available on the mains. Within certain limits,
it is also capable of correcting fundamental voltage
amplitude.
Figure 13: Output voltage spectrum for “line voltage Although the tested series compensator was a single
distortion”, before compensation. phase version, it may be easily adapted to a
three-phase system. For this purpose it will be
necessary to implement two more single-phase
inverters, sharing the same DC power source.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Prof. Adriano Tavares

and Prof. Carlos Silva for their help in this work.
The authors are grateful to FCT (Fundação para a
Ciência e a Tecnologia), project funding
POCTI/ESE/41170/2001.

Figure 14: Output voltage spectrum for “line voltage

distortion”, after compensation.
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Figure 4: Block diagram of the proposed single phase active series compensator.