Chapter 19 - Power factor correction circuits

Abstract

With the rapid development in power semiconductor devices, power electronic systems have matured and expanded to new and wide application range from residential, commercial, aerospace to military and others. Switch mode power supplies (SMPS) were introduced to reduce losses, and decrease weight and size associated with converting ac power to dc power in linear power supply. The high nonlinearity of this kind of power electronic systems handicaps itself by providing the utility power system with low power factor (PF) and high total harmonic distortion (THD). Power supply industries are undergoing the change of adopting more and more PFC techniques in all off-line power supplies. These unwanted harmonics are commonly corrected by incorporating power factor correction (PFC) technique into the SMPS. This chapter presents an overview of various active harmonic reduction and PFC techniques and gives a brief introduction of these techniques and provides references for future researchers in this area.