Performance Comparison of Sliding Mode and Instantaneous Reactive Power Theory Control Techniques for Three-Phase Active Power Filter

Abstract

The performance comparison of Sliding Mode (SM) control and instantaneous reactive power theory (PQ) control for three-phase Active Power Filter (APF) is presented. Algorithms for SM and PQ techniques were developed and used in the control of APF to shunt harmonics due to non-linear loads from the power grid. Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) was used for performance verification. The PQ control reduced the THD value, on average, from 29.84% to 4.937% while the SM control reduced the THD value, on average, from 29.84% to 5.27%. The results obtained show that PQ control offered slightly better performance in terms of reduced THD than the SM control even though the implementation of SM was less complex due to the use of programmable chips. In addition, the SM control recovered faster from transient disturbances than the PQ algorithm. Both results are, however, within the conformity limit of the IEEE standard and have proven to be good for harmonic mitigation. MATLAB/Simulink 2018 version was used as the simulation tool.