Current-Limiting Three-Phase Rectifiers

In this paper, a nonlinear controller is proposed for a three-phase rectifier so that its input current does not exceed a given limit. At the same time, the proposed controller can achieve accurate dc output voltage regulation and reactive power control independently from system parameters including the load during the normal operation. Using the generic dq transformation and the nonlinear model of the rectifier, the boundedness and the current-limiting property of the closed-loop system are proven using Lyapunov methods and the input-to-state stability theory. Moreover, an analytic framework for selecting the controller parameters is presented and the current limitation is proven for both the cases with L and LCL filters at the input of the rectifier. Different from existing approaches, the current-limiting property is achieved without external limiters, monitoring devices, or switches and is incorporated in the control dynamics, independently from the type of the load (linear or nonlinear). Extensive real-time simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.