Study of control strategies for shunt active power filter for harmonics suppression

Excessive use of nonlinear and time varying devices results in harmonic currents in the secondary distribution system. The suppression of harmonics is a dominant issue and one of the practical ways to compensate harmonics is shunt active power filter (SAPF). The core part of the SAPF is control techniques used for reference current generation. This paper presents a comprehensive study of three control strategies namely instantaneous reactive power (p-q) theory, synchronous reference frame (SRF) theory and instantaneous active and reactive current (i_d- i_q) component method for SAPF in a three phase three wire distribution system. These three control methods aims to compensate harmonics, reactive power and load unbalance under sinusoidal balanced supply voltage conditions. Simulation results present a relative investigation of three control techniques based on current THD and load unbalance.