Electrical Power and Energy Systems 63 (2014) 927932

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Performance of multilevel shunt active lter for smart grid applications

B. Sangeetha a,, K. Geetha b
a
b

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, AVS Engineering College, Salem 636 003, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Karpagam Institute of Technology, Coimbatore 641 105, Tamil Nadu, India

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 1 February 2014
Received in revised form 11 June 2014
Accepted 16 June 2014
Available online 23 July 2014
Keywords:
Power quality
Active power lter
Fuzzy PI controller
Harmonics compensation

a b s t r a c t
Active power lters are the most efcient tool to reduce harmonics produced by the power electronic
converter used in integration of renewable energy resources with grid. In this work, a control method
for active power lter was designed for grid connected photovoltaic system. The shunt active lter
(SAF) topology consists of ve level cascaded multilevel inverter with fuzzy PI controller to regulate
the dc side voltage. Synchronous reference frame theory is tailored for the computation of SAF reference
current. Constant switching frequency sub-harmonic pulse width modulation (CSFSHPWM) was implemented to generate switching pulses to voltage source inverter. This approach not only accomplishes
the compensation of harmonics, but also transfers the active power at unity power factor to the grid.
It can be also used to fuse the power generated by the renewable energy source in the grid and function
as SAF. This system eradicates the supplementary equipment required to improve the power quality. The
control system operation was simulated using the MATLAB/Simulink power system toolbox and experimental results are furnished to verify the efciency of this method.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In recent years, environmental pollution due to fossil fuels and
shortage of energy, have led to the development of non-polluting
energy sources such as renewable energy sources (RES). Among
these RES, solar power systems are the affable solution for electrication. Nowadays, photovoltaic system [PV] has been increasingly
used in medium sized grid. To interface this RES, power electronic
converters [PEC] were used. The penetration of PEC may create a
hazard to network in terms of power-quality problems such as harmonics. These harmonics has to be reduced, since it may lead to
malfunctioning of protective relays and other control unit. There
are number of techniques available to reduce harmonic related
power quality problems, which has many disadvantages like electromagnetic interference, possible resonance problem, xed compensation and bulkiness [1,2] etc.
Shunt active lters can be implemented in the existing systems
and widely used in the practical application which has been
accepted as the most valuable technique for harmonic compensation [37].
Fig. 1 illustrates the congurations of a photovoltaic interactive
shunt active power lter system [8]. PV array consists of number of
solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity. As the photovoltaic
Corresponding author. Mobile: +91 9443701470.
E-mail address: ssa_geetha@yahoo.com (B. Sangeetha).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2014.06.047
0142-0615/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

power varies with the climatic conditions, to obtain the maximum

power from PV array, it is coupled with a maximum power point
tracker. The power generated from the RES requires power conditioner to ensure the voltage level of lter [912]. For this purpose,
DC-DC converter is employed. The output obtained from the DC-DC
converter is coupled with dc link capacitor which in turn connected to grid through inverter. The voltage source inverter transfer active power from RES and also operates as SAF to compensate
the current harmonics [13,14].
In the absence of sunlight, the PV system is decoupled from the
grid by the dc capacitor and then the individual control of converters on dc-link is activated. As the asymmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter upholds different voltage source [15], this method
is well suited for solar power system. H-bridge inverters connected
in series, forms a cascaded multilevel inverter [CMLI]. The output
voltage of the inverter equals the sum of the voltage generated
by each cell. An s-level CMLI consists of (s  1)/2 single-phase full
bridges and the output voltage levels are 2s + 1, where s is the
number of cells. Fig. 2 shows single phase cascaded multilevel
inverter with each bridge connected with a dc source. It can be easily extended to required number of levels. The output voltage of
multilevel inverter for a single phase is shown in Fig. 3.
The controller plays the vital role in designing SAF. The exact
model of the system and its sensitiveness of variation to system
parameter makes the conventional controller outdated. So theres
a great tendency to use intelligent control techniques [16] like

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B. Sangeetha, K. Geetha / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 63 (2014) 927932

Load

~
Source
Shunt
Active
Filter

PV
Array

Fig. 1. Congurations of a photovoltaic interactive shunt active power lter system.

Fig. 3. The output voltage of multilevel inverter.

Reference current generation

Principle of the control method

1
+v

The reference current has great impact on steady state performance of the SAF. Thus, the reference compensation signals are
derived as follows,
The instantaneous current and source voltage is given as

is t i1 t  ic t

V s t V m sin xt

When the system is connected with non-linear load, the load

current consists of both fundamental and harmonic components
which is expressed as

IL t

1
X
In sinnxt /n
n1

I1 sinnxt /1

1
X

sinnxt /n

n2

PL t V s t il t

Thus, the load power

V m I1 sin xt cos /1 V m I1 sin xt cos xt  sin /1

1
X
V m sin xt In sinnxt /n
n2

Pf t Pr t P h t
2
-v1

The real power drawn by the load

2

Pf t V m I1 sin xt  cos /1 V s t is t

1
2

g
m

is t P f t=V s t I1 cos /1 sin xt Im sin xt

where Im = I1 cos /1.

The source has to deliver power to compensate the converter
switching losses and capacitor leakage besides the real power consumed by the load. The total current contributed by the source

After compensation, the source current will be

Isp Ism Is1

Fig. 2. Topology of single phase cascaded multilevel inverter.

fuzzy PI controller, due to its robustness and no need of mathematical model [1719]. This work validates an enhanced control strategy of ve level cascaded multilevel SAF for the solar system
interfaced with the grid.

If the active lter affords the harmonic and reactive power compensation, the source current is sinusoidal and in phase with the
source voltage. Thus, the compensation current provided by the
active lter

ic t iL t  is t

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B. Sangeetha, K. Geetha / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 63 (2014) 927932

Hence, it is necessary to estimate the reference current for precise compensation of reactive power and harmonics. The reference
current can be estimated using the DC side capacitor voltage. The
desired source currents, after compensation


isa Isp sin xt



isb Isp sinxt  120

10

isc Isp sinxt 120

The DC voltage control is obtained using a fuzzy PI controller.
The output of the fuzzy PI controller is measured as desired source
current. The reference currents are calculated by multiplying
source current with unit sine vectors which are in phase with
the source voltages.

CEn cen  Gce

12

In in  GDi

13

where e(n), ce(n), I(n) are error of reference voltage and DC capacitor voltage, change in error voltage, output of the fuzzy PI controller
and Ge, Gce, GDi are scaling factors.
The output of fuzzy PI controller

un un  1 Dun

14

where u(n), u(n  1) and Du(n) are output of the controller, output
of the controller at (n  1)th instant and incremental change in the
output of the controller, which is determined by the IF THEN rules
shown in Table 1.

Implementation of fuzzy PI controller

Constant switching frequency sub-harmonic pulse width modulation
A fuzzy PI controller [20] used in this system was shown in
Fig. 4. The inputs of fuzzy logic controller are error e(n) and change
of error De(n)

en rn  yn;

Den en  en  1

where r, y, n and (n  1) are reference input, system output, present

state of the system and previous state of the system. The incremental change in the control signal Du(n) is the output of the FLC.
The input and output of fuzzy PI controller derived as

En en  Ge

11

The MATLAB/Simulink model of CSFSHPWM for phaseA is

illustrated in Fig. 5. Most commonly used modulation techniques
for multilevel inverters were space vector PWM method and carrier based PWM methods. Due to fast response, simple computation and suitability for multilevel inverters, carrier based PWM
method was implemented in this work. In this technique triangular
signals each of 1 kHz frequency (fc) and magnitude (Ac) of 0.33
were used as carrier signals and the sinusoidal voltage wave form
obtained from compensating reference current estimator was used
as modulating signal. The modulating and carrier signals were
compared constantly. When the modulating signal is greater than

Table 1
Rule base of fuzzy PI controller.

Fig. 4. Fuzzy PI controller.

De/e

NB

NM

NS

ZE

PS

PM

PB

NB
NM
NS
ZE
PS
PM
PB

NB
NB
NB
NM
NM
NS
ZE

NB
NB
NM
NS
NS
ZE
PS

NB
NM
NS
NS
ZE
PS
PM

NM
NS
NS
ZE
PS
PS
PM

NM
NS
ZE
PS
PS
PM
PB

NS
ZE
PS
PS
PM
PB
PB

ZE
PS
PM
PM
PB
PB
PB

Fig. 5. MATLAB/Simulink model of CSFSHPWM for phaseA.

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B. Sangeetha, K. Geetha / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 63 (2014) 927932

the carrier signal, the output pulse is low and it switches off the
active device.
The frequency ratio Mf and amplitude modulation index Ma
of the multilevel inverter is

M f fc =fm
M a Am =m  1Ac
Simulation results
By using MATLAB/Simulink, the simulation study was carried
for grid interfaced solar system. This system opt mamdanis fuzzy
inference method, 49 rules, centroid defuzzication, the capacitor
voltage and its derivative were considered as the input. The conversion of fuzzy values is shown in Fig. 6a, Fig. 6b and Fig. 6c by
the membership functions.

Fig. 7. Source current for nonlinear load before compensation.

Fig. 6a. Membership functions for error of reference voltage and DC capacitor
voltage.
Fig. 8. Voltage and current of source after compensation.

Fig. 6b. Membership functions for change in error voltage.

Fig. 6c. Membership functions for output of the controller.

Fig. 9. Harmonic spectrum of source current with SAF.

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931

Thus from the simulation results, it is evident that this method

can be efciently used for reactive power compensation and current harmonics reduction along with injection of active power
from RES.
Experimental results
The performance of this approach is validated with laboratory
prototype. The renewable energy source connected with controlled
converter injects power to the dc link of the inverter. The DS1104
DSP of dSPACE generates the reference current signals. The switching pulses for IGBT was generated using external PWM board.
Fig. 10 shows the experimental result of source current without
SAF operation. Fig. 11 shows the experimental result of source current with SAF operation. From the experimental results it is proven
that, the harmonics caused by nonlinear load were almost compensated by the lter operation. Thus the source current is nearly
sinusoidal.
From the simulated and experimental results, it is obvious that
this proposed system can be efciently used for reactive power
compensation and current harmonics reduction along with injection of active power from RES.
Fig. 10. Experimental results of the source current before compensation.

The rule base consists of 49 IF-THEN rules.

Initially, the inverter is not connected to the network. Fig. 7
shows the grid current prole before compensation. The source
current is polluted with harmonic distortion. When the inverter
is coupled with network, it injects current. So, the source current
changes from unbalanced nonlinear to balanced sinusoidal current. The voltage and current waveform of the source after compensation was shown in Fig. 8. It is observed that the system
allows harmonics reduction and reactive power compensation
simultaneously. From Fig. 9, it is concluded that the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the source current was improved to
2.47% after compensation which is within the limit of IEEE 519
standard prescribed for current distortions in distribution system.

Conclusions
In this paper, ve level CMLI based shunt active power lter
was designed with fuzzy PI controller. The SAF topology consists
of ve level CMLI with fuzzy PI controller to regulate the dc
voltage. Synchronous reference frame theory is tailored for computation of SAF reference current. CSFSHPWM was implemented
to generate switching pulses to voltage source inverter. This
approach not only accomplishes the harmonic compensation,
but also transfers the active power at unity power factor to
the grid. It can be also used to fuse the power generated by
the renewable energy source in the grid and function as SAF.
From the simulated and experimental results, it is obvious that
this proposed system can be efciently used for reactive power
compensation and current harmonics reduction along with
injection of active power from RES.

Fig. 11. Experimental results of the source current & voltage after compensation.

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B. Sangeetha, K. Geetha / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 63 (2014) 927932

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