Performing reactive power compensation of three-phase induction motor by using parallel active power filter

Abstract

Nowadays, the problem of power quality increases day by day. Harmonic current and reactive power are the important factors disturbing the power quality. The induction motors draw both harmonic current and reactive power from the grid. Reactive power and harmonic current lead to heat losses and decrease in the efficiency of the transmission lines. Passive and active filter applications have been used to solve these problems. There are some disadvantages of passive filters. Large physical dimensions and resonance with load can be shown as examples for these disadvantages. Therefore, the application areas of Active Power Filter (APF) are rapidly developing due to the fact that they can be applied together with harmonic and reactive power compensation as appropriate control methods. This paper proposes a MATLAB/Simulink simulation to perform power factor correction and reactive power compensation of three-phase induction motor by using three-phase Parallel Active Power Filter (PAPF). In order to generate PAPF’s reference currents the Sine Multiplication Technique (SMT) is used. Simulation studies are presented to be able to assess the performances under different motor operating conditions. The proposed hysteresis controller based PAPF filter makes the power factor up to 1 and the reactive power compensation of the three-phase induction motor.