Synchronous reference frame based controllers applied to shunt active power filters in three-phase four-wire systems

This work presents compensation algorithm schemes used for shunt active power filters applied to three-phase four-wire systems, allowing harmonic current suppression and reactive power compensation, which results in an effective power factor correction. The strategies used to extract the three-phase reference currents are based on the synchronous reference frame method. Although this method is based on balanced three-phase loads, it can also be used for single-phase loads, allowing independent control of all three phases. Accordingly, a fictitious quadrature current needs to be generated through software implementation, and be orthogonal to the measured load current. This creates the fictitious balanced currents in the two-phase stationary reference frame system, allowing the choice of an adequate compensation strategy which will result in either balanced or unbalanced sinusoidal source currents. Three shunt APF topologies are evaluated under unbalanced load conditions: Split-Capacitor (S-C), Four-Leg (F-L) and Three Full-Bridge (3F-B). The proposed algorithms applied to the three APF topologies are evaluated and discussed. Mathematical analyses of the SRF-based algorithms are presented and simulation results are performed to validate the theoretical development and confirm the performance of the shunt APFs.