Single phase series active power filter based on 15-level cascaded inverter topology

A topology of series active power filter (SAPF) based on a single phase half-bridge cascaded multilevel inverter is proposed to compensate voltage harmonics of the load connected to the point of common coupling (PCC). The main parts of the inverter are presented in detail. Any voltage reference can be easily obtained by a simple control with the proposed inverter. Therefore, the inverter acts as a harmonic source when the reference is a non-sinusoidal signal. A prototype of 15-level inverter based SAPF is manufactured without using a parallel passive filter (PPF) as it is intended to represent the compensation capability of the SAPF by itself. The load connected to PCC whose voltage is non-sinusoidal is filtered both in simulation and experimental studies. The validity of the proposed inverter based SAPF is verified by simulation as well as experimental study. Both simulation and experimental results show that the proposed multilevel inverter is suitable for SAPF applications.