Control of a 3-phase 4-leg active power filter under non-ideal mains voltage condition

Abstract

In this paper, instantaneous reactive power theory (IRP), also known as p– q theory based a new control algorithm is proposed for 3-phase 4-wire and 4-leg shunt active power filter (APF) to suppress harmonic currents, compensate reactive power and neutral line current and balance the load currents under unbalanced non-linear load and non-ideal mains voltage conditions. The APF is composed from 4-leg voltage source inverter (VSI) with a common DC-link capacitor and hysteresis–band PWM current controller. In order to show validity of the proposed control algorithm, compared conventional p– q and p– q– r theory, four different cases such as ideal and unbalanced and balanced-distorted and unbalanced-distorted mains voltage conditions are considered and then simulated. All simulations are performed by using Matlab-Simulink Power System Blockset. The performance of the 4-leg APF with the proposed control algorithm is found considerably effective and adequate to compensate harmonics, reactive power and neutral current and balance load currents under all non-ideal mains voltage scenarios.