2012 IEEE 7th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference - ECCE Asia June 2-5, 2012,

Harbin, China

Improvement of Power Quality under Distorted Source and Nonlinear Load Conditions
Quoc Nam Trinh
School of Electrical Engineering University of Ulsan, Ulsan, South Korea trinhquocnam2010@yahoo.com
AbstractThis paper proposes an enhanced control strategy for unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) including a series and a shunt active power filter (APF) to compensate harmonics in the distorted supply voltage and nonlinear load current. In the series APF control scheme, a proportional-integral (PI) controller and a resonant controller tuned at six multiple of the fundamental frequency of the network ( 6S ) are performed to compensate harmonics in distorted source, meanwhile a PI controller and three resonant controllers tuned at 6ns (n=1, 2, 3) are designed in the shunt APF control scheme to mitigate harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads. Thereby, the load voltage and the supply current are regulated to be sinusoidal waveforms. Performance of the UPQC is significantly improved compared to the conventional control strategy thanks to the superiority of resonant controllers. The feasibility of the proposed UPQC control scheme is validated through the simulation.
Fig. 1 Block diagram of the conventional UPQC control scheme

Hong Hee Lee

School of Electrical Engineering University of Ulsan, Ulsan, South Korea hhlee@mail.ulsan.ac.kr

Keywords-component: Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC), active power filters (APFs), harmonic compensation, power quality.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Power quality problems have been greatly concerned in these days due to the wide use of nonlinear loads such as adjustable speed drives, electric arc welders, and switching power supplies in distribution systems. The nonlinear loads cause the harmonic currents into the networks and consequently distort the voltage waveform at the point of common coupling (PCC) due to the system impedances. This distorted voltage waveform harmfully affects to other loads connected at this point. To avoid this problem and to protect the loads from distortions, the harmonic components of the voltage and current must be fully compensated. LC passive filters and shunt active power filters (APFs) are regularly used to mitigate harmonic currents [1], [2]. However, since this solution is only capable of dealing with harmonic current problem, it does not have a control effort to reduce the voltage harmonics at the PCC. As a result, even though harmonic currents are successfully compensated, the voltage waveform at the PCC is unable to be improved. In order to simultaneously deal with harmonic voltage and current problems, an advanced solution, i.e., the unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) has been developed [2]-[11]. The

UPQC is the combination of a shunt and a series APF where the shunt APF is operated as a controlled current source to compensate the harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads, meanwhile the series APF is acted as a controlled voltage source to compensate harmonics of the supply voltage, and to ensure both the load voltage and the supply current sinusoidal. Various UPQC control schemes have been developed to mitigate harmonic voltages and currents [2]-[11]. Majority of the previous studies are based on the p-q theory and require too many sensors: three sets of current and two sets of voltage sensors as shown in Fig. 1 [2]-[5]. In Fig. 1, the harmonic components in the supply voltage ( vS , abc ) and load current ( iL, abc ) are detected by using harmonic detectors, and the filter voltage ( v f ,abc ) and current ( iF , abc ) are then regulated to make the load voltage ( vL , abc ) and supply current ( iS , abc ) sinusoidal. Due to the use of harmonic detectors, the accuracy and response of the control scheme can be adversely impacted. In addition, the hysteresis controller is regularly used in these control schemes due to its simple and robust characteristics. In spite of its fast response, it has several shortcomings: first, due to the variation of switching frequency, the design of the output filters for converters is very difficult; second, the control performance is limited by the trade-off between the hysteresis band (HB) and switching frequency: if the HB is designed to be very small, the control performance

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978-1-4577-2088-8/11/$26.00 2012 IEEE

may be better, but the switching frequency becomes very high, and consequently, the switching loss also is increased. These two drawbacks degrade the control performance of hysteresis controller. Recently, to simplify the control scheme, the indirect control techniques were introduced where the load voltage and supply current are measured and regulated instead of the filter voltage and current [6]-[11]. Thereby, harmonic detectors are eliminated and the number of sensors is reduced: only two set of voltage sensors and one set of current sensors are demanded. However, since those control strategies are also employed by using hysteresis controllers, good control performance cannot be achieved since switching ripples are always presented in the load voltage and supply current waveforms. To improve performance of the UPQC, this paper proposes an enhanced control scheme with the aid of proportionalintegral (PI) and resonant controllers. In the series APF control scheme, a PI controller plus a resonant controller tuned at six multiple of the fundamental frequency of the network ( 6S ) are performed to compensate harmonic voltages, meanwhile in the shunt APF control scheme, a PI controller and three resonant controllers tuned at 6ns (n=1, 2, 3) are performed to mitigate harmonic currents. Thereby, the load voltage and the supply current are regulated to be sinusoidal waveforms. Owing to the superiority of the resonant controllers, the control performance of the UPQC is significantly improved compared to the conventional control strategy. The feasibility of the proposed UPQC control scheme is verified through simulation results.

A. Proposed control scheme for the series APF The main objective of the series APF is to compensate harmonic voltages in the distorted source to maintain the load voltage sinusoidal. Assuming that the source voltage available at the PCC ( vS ) is distorted and includes the fundamental ( vS1 ) and harmonic components ( vSh ) as defined in (1)

vS ( t ) = vS 1 + vSh
h 1

(1)

To make load voltage sinusoidal, the harmonic components presented in (1) must be completely compensated. In the threephase systems, harmonic voltages have odd orders: (6n1) (n = 1, 2, 3...) of the fundamental frequency of the network ( S ). Among those harmonics, fifth and seventh harmonics are the most severe components that need to be eliminated. A resonant controller with the superiority in regulating ac signals is an effective solution to realize this control target [12]. Two resonant controllers tuned at 5S and 7S are able to sufficiently track fifth and seventh harmonics. Moreover, since both fifth and seventh harmonics become sixth harmonic in the fundamental reference frame, one resonant controller with resonant frequency of 6S is also capable of simultaneously compensating both fifth and seventh harmonic voltages. Accordingly, the control scheme is simplified since only one controller is needed to regulate two harmonics. The open-loop transfer function of the resonant controller is defined as
GR = K r 6c s s + 2c s + (6s ) 2
2

II.

PROPOSED UPQC CONTROL SCHEME

(2)

Fig. 2 shows the block diagram of the proposed UPQC control scheme. As shown in Fig. 2, since the proposed control scheme does not have harmonic detectors, the performance of UPQC relies only on the voltage and current controller of series and shunt APFs which are investigated in following subsections.

where K r 6 and c are the resonant gain and the cut-off frequency of the resonant controller, respectively. In addition, in order to compensate a small voltage drop on the system impedance and the series transformer as well as to improve dynamic response of the series APF, a PI controller is utilized. Consequently, the voltage control scheme for the series APF consists of a PI controller and a resonant controller, and the transfer function is given as follows
GPI R = K p + Ki K r 6c s + 2 s s + 2c s + (6s ) 2

(3)

where K p and Ki are the proportional and integrator gains of the PI controller, respectively. Since the proposed control algorithm is designed in the fundamental reference frame, a phase locked loop (PLL) is required to track the phase angle of the supply voltage which is needed for coordinate transformation and synchronization. However, the conventional PLL is unable to operate properly under distorted supply voltage. Hence, a low-pass filter (LPF) is added before the PLL block to reject the effect of harmonic

Fig. 2 Block diagram of the proposed UPQC control scheme

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voltage components on the PLL performance. The detail control scheme for the series APF is shown in Fig. 3(a).

the resonant controller is described as follows

G3 R =

2 h = 6,12,18 s + 2c s + ( h s )

K rhc s
2

(4)

where h=6,12,18 are the order of harmonic currents in the fundamental reference frame.

a) Control scheme for series APF

In addition, since the shunt APF must regulate Vdc , a PI current controller is also needed to regulate fundamental current to charge Vdc . As a result, the current controller of the shunt APF consists of a PI controller and three resonant controllers as presented in Fig. 3(b). III. ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF VOLTAGE AND CURRENT CONTROLLERS

b) Control scheme for shunt APF

Fig. 3 Proposed control scheme for UPQC

To assess performance of the proposed voltage controller in compensating fifth and seventh harmonic voltages, the closedloop transfer function of the proposed resonant controller which is determined by (5) is analyzed.

B. Proposed control scheme for shunt APF The purpose of a shunt APF is to mitigate harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads. The nonlinear load under consideration is a three-phase diode rectifier supplying a dc load. This type of load introduces harmonic currents into the networks, which have odd orders: (6n1) (n = 1, 2, 3...) of S . To make the supply current sinusoidal, the shunt APF must inject the currents having the same magnitude and opposite phase with harmonics in the nonlinear load current. In addition, the shunt APF also has a responsibility to maintain the common DC-link voltage of series and shunt APF ( Vdc ) in stable manner. As a result, the shunt APF control scheme includes the outer voltage control loop and the inner current control loop as shown in Fig. 3(b). In the Vdc voltage control loop, a simple PI controller is sufficient to regulate the DC-link voltage to be constant at desired value because this voltage has slow dynamic response. However, in the current control loop, since the shunt APF must generate harmonic currents which are high frequency signals, the PI controller cannot be a sufficient solution due to its limitation on control bandwidth. In order to adequately regulate harmonic currents, the resonant controller is utilized. It is the same as the harmonics in voltage case that the (6n1) harmonic currents become 6n harmonics in the fundamental reference frame. Hence, one resonant controller with a resonant frequency of 6nS is capable of regulating a pair of (6n1) harmonic currents. Thereby, the number of controller is reduced to a half. In fact, the effects of very high order harmonics can be negligible. In this paper, only first six (up to 19th) harmonics are considered to be compensated. Accordingly, three resonant controllers are needed to regulate those six harmonic currents. The open-loop transfer function of
=

GC =

GR ( s )GLC ( s ) 1 + GR ( s)GLC ( s )
K r 6c s
(5)

( s + 2c s + (6s ) 2 )GLC + K r 6c s

where GLC = 1/ ( L f C f s 2 + R f C f s + 1) is the transfer function of the LC filter. The Bode diagram of (5) with respect to different values of K r 6 and c is shown in Fig. 4. It can be observed that the resonant controller provides a unity gain and zero phase-shift at selected resonant frequency, i.e., six multiple of the fundamental frequency (360Hz) regardless of the value of K r 6 and c . It indicates that the proposed resonant controller is capable of tracking sixth harmonics with zero steady-state error. As mentioned before, the fifth and seventh harmonics become sixth harmonic in the d-q frame, hence if the proposed controller can regulate sixth harmonic with zero steady-state error, the fifth and seventh harmonics will be mitigated too. The resonant controller given in (2) has two control parameters, i.e., K r 6 and c where K r 6 gain determines the steady-state performance and c affects into the control bandwidth of the resonant controller around the selected resonant frequency [12]. In fact, steady-state performance is considered more important than dynamic response in the harmonic voltage compensation. Hence, in order to achieve good steady-state performance, c should be small and K r 6 need to be increased as high as possible to make the resonant controller have narrow bandwidth. According to the design method reported in [13], c = 5 rad / s and K r 6 = 500 are selected. Generally, a large K r 6 does not affect to the system stability since this gain has the same effect as integral gain in the PI

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controller [12]. However, if the resonant frequency of the LC filter is neighbor the fifth and/or seventh harmonic frequencies, the resonant controller may excite the LC resonance when the resonant controller is applied to the system. Hence, to avoid that problem, the LC filter should be selected to have a very high resonant frequency, which is much higher than the fifth and seventh harmonics as shown in Fig. 4.
Bode Diagram 1

phase-shift at selected resonant frequencies, i.e., 360Hz, 720Hz, and 1080Hz, regardless of the value of K rh and c . It means that the proposed controller is able to regulate selected harmonic currents with zero steady-state error. In the harmonic current compensation, both steady-state performance and dynamic response are important factors since the load is not always constant. However, it is difficult to achieve simultaneously good steady-state performance and very fast dynamic response. Hence, a good steady-state performance and adequately fast dynamic response is preferred which reveals K rh should be high and c should be sufficient large to make the resonant controller have wide bandwidth. In fact, as the order of harmonic current increased, its magnitude is reduced. Hence, resonant gain should be smaller at higher order. As a result, K r 6 = 300, K r12 = 200, K r18 = 100 , and c = 10 rad / s are selected according to [13].

wc=10
Magnitude (abs) 0.9 0.8 Kr6=2000 0.7 0.6 0.5 45 Phase (deg) 0 -45 -90 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Frequency (Hz)

Kr6=500, wc=5

Resonant peak of LC filter

IV.
Resonant frequency (360Hz)

SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig. 4 Bode diagram of closed-loop transfer function of proposed voltage controller

In order to determine whether the proposed current controller sufficiently regulates harmonic currents, the closed-loop transfer function of the proposed current controller given in (6) is analyzed.

The simulation system consists of a UPQC and a 13-kVA nonlinear load supplied by a distorted source where the total harmonic distortion (THD) factor of the non-linear load and distorted source are 25.2% and 22.4%, respectively. The detail system parameters are given in Table I. The simulations are performed by using PSIM software.
TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS Parameters Fundamental voltage Supply Frequency Fifth order voltage Seventh order voltage 3-phase AC inductance Load resistance Reference voltage Capacitance Filter inductance Switching frequency Filter inductance Series APF Filter capacitance Switching frequency

VS , abc
fS

Value 220 Vrms 60 Hz 15% 7% 2 mH 20 700 V 2.2 mF 3.5 mH 5 kHz 0.7 mH 27 F 5 kHz

GC =

GPI 3 R ( s )GL ( s ) 1 + GPI 3R ( s)GL ( s )

(6)

where GL = 1/ ( Lsh s + Rsh ) is the transfer function of the Lsh inductor.

Bode Diagram 30 20 Magnitude (dB) 10 0 -10 -20 -30 0 Phase (deg) -45 -90 -135 -180 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Frequency (Hz)

Load DC-link

Lac

Rdc
Vdc

Cdc

wc=10 Krh=1000 wc=5 Krh=2000 wc=5 Krh=1000

Shunt APF

Lsh
f sw
Lf Cf

f sw

1080Hz 360Hz 720Hz

Fig. 5 Bode diagram of closed-loop transfer function of proposed current controller

Bode diagram of (6) with respect to different values of K rh and c is illustrated in Fig. 5. In Fig. 5, it can be observed that the resonant controller provides a unity gain (0 dB) and zero

First, a simulation is carried out by using the conventional control scheme reported in [11] where hysteresis controllers are used. In this simulation, the HBs of voltage and current controller are selected as 2% and 3% of their reference values, respectively. The simulation result is shown in Fig. 6. As depicted in Fig. 6, even though a very small HB is used, performance of the load voltage and supply current are not good: there are many distortions in those waveforms. These distortions are caused by the switching frequency variation of the hysteresis controller: the switching frequency varies in a wide range and the output filters are unable to cancel entire switching noises. As a result, high frequency distortions are left

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with high THD factor of the load voltage and supply current which are 3.9% and 7.4%, respectively. These results does not apparently comply with the IEEE 519 harmonic standards [14]. In this case, even though the HB is small, the current and voltage ripple are still large because ripples on the load voltage and the supply current influence to each other. The ripple on supply current makes the load voltage more distorted due to the system and series transformer impedance, and this distorted voltage waveform subsequently affect to performance of the shunt APF. Consequently, the supply current becomes more ripple as depicted in Fig. 6. In addition, since the HB is small values, the switching frequency becomes very high, and it results in higher switching loss of UPQC.
Fig. 7 Simulation results with the proposed control scheme

After that, when the load is changed from 50% to 100% of its rated value, the UPQC also quickly responds against the change to mitigate harmonics in load current and to guarantee both the load voltage and supply current always to be sinusoidal. It is noticed that the supply current also needs around one cycle to be settled at the steady-state value. Actually, due to the limitation on control bandwidth of the DClink voltage control loop, one cycle response time of the supply current is an acceptable result. Moreover, this result is much better than results reported in [10] and [11] where the dynamic response of the supply current is more than two cycles.
Fig. 6 Simulation results with the conventional control scheme

To demonstrate the superiority of the proposed control algorithm as compared to the conventional control scheme, a simulation is carried out using the proposed control scheme under the same condition with the hysteresis control scheme. The result is presented in Fig. 7. Fig. 7 reveals that the harmonics in supply voltage and nonlinear load current are effectively compensated, and the load voltage and supply current become sinusoidal waveforms with small THD factors of approximately 1.2% and 1.95% for the load voltage and supply current, respectively, which completely meet the IEEE 519 standards. In Fig. 7, the load voltage and supply current waveforms do not contain switching noises since the switching frequency of the proposed algorithm is fixed. Hence, it is easy to design the output filter to cancel switching noises. In addition, since the switching frequency of the proposed method is relatively low (5 kHz) compared to that of the hysteresis control (18 kHz average), the switching loss is significantly reduced. From these comparative results, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is completely verified. To evaluate the dynamic performance of the proposed control strategy, the transient responses of the UPQC when the UPQC is turned on and the load is changed are illustrated in Fig. 8. It can be observed in Fig. 8 that when the UPQC is turned on, the UPQC takes less than one fundamental cycle to completely compensate harmonics in the supply voltage and nonlinear load current to make the load voltage and the supply current become sinusoidal waveforms.

Fig. 8 Dynamic response of UPQC with the proposed control scheme

Fig. 9 presents the dynamic responses of the UPQC with the hysteresis controller under the same condition as above test. As shown in Fig. 9, thanks to the fast response characteristic of the hysteresis controller, the load voltage is immediately compensated to be sinusoidal when the UPQC is turned on. However, the supply current takes about one cycle to settle at its steady-state which is similar to that shown in Fig. 8. It is because the dynamic response of the supply current depends on not only the hysteresis controller but also the DC-link voltage controller. As a result, the dynamic response the UPQC with

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hysteresis controller is similar to that with the proposed control scheme. However, it is obvious that steady-state performance is worse to that with the proposed control scheme.

load variations. From the simulation results, the THD of the load voltage and supply current are reduced to 1.2% and 1.95%, respectively, which are much lower than those of the conventional control method and completely comply with the IEEE-519 standards. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was partly supported by the NRF grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (No. 2010-0025483) and the Networkbased Automation Research Centre (NARC) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] Fig. 9 Dynamic response of UPQC with the conventional control scheme [5] [6] H. Akagi, New trends in active filters for power conditioning, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 32, pp. 13121332, Nov./Dec. 1996. H. Akagi, E. H. Watanabe, and M. Aredes, Instantaneous Power Theory and Applications to Power Conditioning. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-IEEE Press, Apr. 2007. H. Fujita and H. Akagi, The unified power quality conditioner: The integration of series and shunt active filters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 315322, Mar. 1998. D. Graovac, V. Katic, and A. Rufer, Power quality problems compensation with universal power quality conditioning system, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 968976, Apr. 2007. B. Han, B. Bae, H. Kim, and S. Baek, Combined operation of unified power quality conditioner with distributed generation, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 330338, Jan. 2006. E. Ozdemir, M. Ucar, M. Kesler, and M. Kale, A simplified control algorithm for shunt active power filter without load and filter current measurement, in Proc. 32nd IEEE IECON , Paris, France, 2006, pp. 25992604. Yash Pal, A. Swarup, and Bhim Singh, Control Strategy for Selective Compensation of Power Quality Problems through Three-Phase FourWire UPQC, J. Power Electron., Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 576-582, July 2011. Bhim Singh and Venkateswarlu.P, A Simplified Control Algorithm for Three-Phase, Four-Wire Unified Power Quality Conditioner, J. Power Electron. , Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 91-96, January 2010. Iurie Axente, Malabika Basu, Michael F. Conlon and Kevin Gaughan, A 12-kVA DSP-Controlled Laboratory Prototype UPQC Capable of Mitigating Unbalance in Supply voltage and Load Current, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1302-1309, June 2010. Khadkikar, A. Chandra, A. O. Barry, and T. D. Nguyen, Power quality enhancement utilizing single phase unified power quality conditioner: digital signal processor-based experimental validation, IET Power Electronics, vol.4, no.3, pp.323-331, March 2011. M. Kesler, E. Ozdemir, Synchronous Reference Frame Based Control Method for UPQC under Unbalanced and Distorted Load Conditions, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., Vol. 58, No. 9, pp. 3967-3975 , Sept. 2011. D. N. Zmood and D. G. Holmes, Stationary frame current regulation of PWM inverters with zero steady-state error, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 18, p.814, 2003. D. G. Holmes, T. A. Lipo, B. P. McGrath, and W. Y. Kong, Optimized design of stationary frame three phase AC current regulators, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 11, pp. 24172426, Nov. 2009. Recommended Practice for Harmonic Control in Electric Power Systems, IEEE Standard 519-1992, 1992.

Table II shows a summary of the comparison between the proposed control algorithm and the conventional one. As presented in Table II, by using the proposed control scheme, the THD factors of the load voltage and supply current are significantly reduced compared with those of the conventional control method. In addition, since the conventional control scheme requires a small HB and a very high switching frequency to achieve an acceptable result, the power loss of UPQC is intensively increased.
TABLE II. COMPARISON OF TWO CONTROL METHODS Proposed control scheme 1.2% (Load voltage) 1.95% (Supply current) Fixed (5 kHz) 352W (13kVA load) Conventional control scheme [11] 3.9% (Load voltage) 7.4% (Supply current) Variable (18 kHz average) 687W (13kVA load)

[7]

[8] [9]

THD factors Switching frequency Power loss

[10]

[11]

V.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, an enhanced control scheme for the UPQC was proposed with the aid of the PI and resonant controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified through simulation studies where the harmonics in the distorted supply voltage and nonlinear load current are effectively compensated to make the load voltage and supply current sinusoidal. The proposed UPQC provides good steadystate performance as well as good dynamic responses against

[12] [13]

[14]

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