Synchronous Detection and Digital control of Shunt

Active Power Filter in Power Quality Improvement

Md. Ashfanoor Kabir and Upal Mahbub
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
E-mail: ashfanoorkabir@yahoo.com

Abstract Power Quality means to maintain purely sinusoidal

current wave form in phase with a purely sinusoidal voltage wave
form. Power quality improvement using traditional compensation methods include many disadvantages like electromagnetic
interference, possible resonance, fixed compensation, bulkiness
etc. So power system and power electronic engineers need to
develop adjustable and dynamic solutions using custom power
devices. These power conditioning equipments use static power
electronic converters to improve the power quality of distribution
system customers. The devices include Active Power Filter (APF),
dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) and Unified Power Quality
Conditioner (UPQC). APF is a compensator used to eliminate
the disturbances in current. There are basically two types of
APFs: the shunt type and the series type. This paper examines
the control of Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF) from two
different aspects: Synchronous Detection Method (SDM) and
digital control based on instantaneous power theory (p-q theory).
Simulation results using MATLAB SIMULINK demonstrates the
application of these methods to the control of APF. Moreover,
this work shows that digital control provides better power quality
improvement than SDM.
Index Terms- Power Quality, Shunt Active Power Filter, Synchronous Detection Method, digital control, p-q theory.

Fig. 1.

Operation of Three Phase Shunt Active Power Filter.

recent efforts have been concentrated on the development of

Active Power Filters (APF) [2].
This paper analyzes the compensation strategy of Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF) in two ways, Synchronous Detection
Method (SDM) and digital control based on instantaneous
power theory (p-q theory). The control strategies of SAPF
system are detailed in the second part of this paper. Simulation
results in the third part demonstrate a comparative study
between the two methods and show the advantages of digital
control over SDM.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Power Quality is a set of electrical boundaries that allows a
piece of equipment to function in its intended manner without
significant loss of performance or life expectancy [1]. The
three phase power generated at the generating station is purely
sinusoidal in nature. Wide spread application of static power
electronics converters, zero and negative sequence components
originated by the use of single phase and unbalanced loads,
reactive power, voltage sag, voltage swell, flicker, voltage
interruption etc. results voltage and current harmonics.
The harmonics presence in the power lines results in varied
problems, like, greater power losses in distribution; problems
of electromagnetic interference in communication systems;
and operation failures of protection devices, electronic equipments and, industrial processes. Due to these problems, the
quality of the electrical energy delivered to the end consumers
is, more than ever, an object of great concern. The passive
filters have been used as a conventional solution to solve
harmonic currents problems, but they have disadvantages like
electromagnetic interference, possible resonance, fixed compensation, bulkiness etc. To cope with these disadvantages,

978-1-4244-8052-4/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

II. P RINCIPLE OF O PERATION

Figure 1 shows the compensation principle of a three phase
shunt active power filter. The source is a balanced Y-connected
three-phase voltage source where the phase voltages are va , vb
and vc , while the nonlinear loads connected to each phase produces nonlinear load currents ia , ib , ic . When the SAPF block
is not operating the nonlinear load current are themselves the
line currents isa , isb and isc , which causes degradation in
power factor and introduces harmonic distortion. When the
SAPF block is operating it injects currents ica , icb and icc
equal in magnitude but in phase opposition to harmonic current
in each of the lines. This compensates the harmonic distortion
and makes the source current balanced sinusoidal while the
load current remains nonlinear.
The SAPF block is basically divided into two parts. The
first part is a control block which does necessary computations
and operations to generate the compensation current reference.
This reference is fed to the IGBT based Voltage Source
Inverter (VSI). A dc capacitor usually works as the source
of power for the VSI. Among many methods of controlling

IV. D IGITAL C ONTROL OF SAPF

BASED ON P - Q THEORY

This section describes the compensation technique of SAPF

with digital control based on p-q theory, which allows dynamic
power factor correction and both harmonics and zero-sequence
current compensation.
A. Principles of p-q theory

Fig. 2.

System power components in a-b-c coordinate

SAPF, SDM and digital control based on p-q theory will be

discussed in this paper.
III. C ONTROL OF SAPF SYSTEM USING S YNCHRONOUS
D ETECTION M ETHOD (SDM)
In the SDM, it is assumed that the three-phase main currents
are balanced after compensation, and it tries to determine that
required amplitude of the main currents. The instantaneous
nonlinear load currents ia (t), ib (t), ic (t) and corresponding
phase voltages va (t), vb (t) and vc (t) (fig 1) are measured
from the lines and real power P (t) is calculated from them
[3],
[
] [
]
P (t) = va (t) vb (t) vc (t) ia (t) ib (t) ic (t)
(1)
Then the average value Pdc is determined by applying P (t)
to a low pass filter. Thus, the real power is split into the three
phases,
Pa

= (Pdc vam )/(vam + vbm + vcm )

(2)

Pb
Pc

= (Pdc vbm )/(vam + vbm + vcm )

= (Pdc vcm )/(vam + vbm + vcm )

(3)
(4)

Where, vam , vbm and vcm are the amplitudes of va (t), vb (t)
and vc (t) respectively. From here, the balanced line currents
can be determined,
isa
isb

=
=

2
(2va Pa )/vam
2
(2vb Pb )/vbm

(5)
(6)

isc

2
(2vc Pc )/vcm

(7)

The compensations current references are thus,

ica
icb
icc

= isa ia
= isb ib
= isb ic

(8)
(9)
(10)

The compensation current references ica , icb and icc are fed
to the VSI which supplies the exact replica of these currents
ica , icb and icc to the line. Since the PWM VSI is assumed
to be instantaneous to track the compensation currents, it is
modeled as a current amplifier with unity gain.

The generalized theory of the instantaneous reactive power

in three-phase circuits, namely the p q theory has been
proposed by Akagi et al. in 1983 [4]. It describes a method
of calculating the instantaneous power components from some
transformed values of three-phase voltages and currents. The
algebraic transformation, known as Clarke Transformation,
converts the three phase a b c coordinates to 0
coordinates. Thus, instantaneous real and reactive power of the
load in fig. 1 can be calculated as follows [5],
[
]
[
]
v0 v v
= A va vb vc
(11)
[
]
[
]
i0 i i
= A ia ib ic
(12)
Where,
1/2 1/2 1/2
2

1
1/2 1/2
A=

3
0
3/2 3/2

(13)

is the Clarke transformation matrix, and,

p0
p
q

= v0 .i0

(14)

= v i + v i
= v i v i

(15)
(16)

Among these quantities, illustrated in Fig. 2 for an electrical

system in a b c coordinates, p0 and pe0 are the mean value
and alternated value of the instantaneous zero-sequence power
respectively, while the mean value and alternated value of the
instantaneous real power are denoted by p and pe. q is the
instantaneous imaginary power.
B. The p-q theory applied to SAPF
The only desirable quantity among all the power components obtained through the p-q theory is p because it
corresponds to the energy transferred from the supply to the
load. To compensate all the other quantities SAPF is used.
Watanabe et al.[6] presented a convenient way to compensate
p0 by delivering it from the power source to the active filter
through coordinates, so that the active filter can supply
this power to the load through the 0 coordinate (see Fig. 2) in a
balanced way. Also the active filter capacitor can compensate pe
and pe0 . The instantaneous imaginary power (q), which includes
the conventional reactive power, can be compensated without
any capacitor [7]. So for a three-phase system with balanced
sinusoidal voltages, the supply currents are also sinusoidal
balanced, and in phase with the voltages. Thus, the power
supply now considers the nonlinear load as a purely resistive

Fig. 5.

The three phase load currents for load set A (a)ia (a)ib and (a)ic

Fig. 6.

The three phase balanced line voltages (a)va (a)vb and (a)vc

symmetrical load. The reference compensation currents in the

coordinates ic , ic can be calculated from [8],
[ ]
[
] [
]
1
ic
v v
pz
=
.
.
(17)
ic
v v
qz
v2 + v2
px

= pe p

p = p0
qx = q = q + qe

(18)
(19)
(20)

where px and qx are the powers to be compensated. Also,

the reference compensation current in the 0 coordinate is i0
itself, ic0 = i0 , since all the instantaneous zero sequence
power will be compensated. In order to obtain the reference
compensation currents in the abc coordinate inverse Clarke
transformation is applied [8],

1/2
1
0
ic0
ica

2
icb =
1/ 2 1/2
. ic
3/2

3
ic
icc
1/ 2 1/2 3/2
(21)
icn = (ica + icb + icc )
(22)
When the currents in 21 are fed to the VSI it generates the
exact replica of these currents but in magnitude equal to the
original line currents. These replicated compensation currents
are then injected to the system to obtain in-phase sinusoidal
source currents with the line voltages that is to conform power
quality.
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Matlab simulink toolbox have used to develop the models
to execute both the SDM and p-q theory calculations. The
simulink models are shown in figures 3 and 4. The Balanced
three phase sinusoidal supply voltage is presented in figure
6 which was used for simulation with different type of loads.
The group of loads, used for each phase, are as follows: Phase
a: a typical single phase half-wave rectifier with a Resistive
load on the DC side (non-sinusoidal current waveform); Phase
b: an RL linear load (sinusoidal current waveform, delayed
regarding to the phase voltage); Phase c: another non-linear
load, constituted by a single phase full wave bridge rectifier
with DC motor load. The load currents are shown in figure 5.
According to the load currents the SAPF generates compensation currents in each phase. These currents for SDM and p-q
theory are shown in figure 8 and 9 respectively. The resultant

Fig. 7.

The three phase load currents for load set B (a)ia (a)ib and (a)ic

sinusoidal supply currents for both the methods are shown in

figures 10 and 11. The implication of SAPF results the supply
phase currents to become sinusoidal, balanced and in phase
with the supply phase voltages. Moreover SAPF has also made
current through the neutral wire to zero. The instantaneous
three phase power at source is presented in figure 12. SAPF
turns the instantaneous three phase power at the source into
a constant value as it compensates all the undesirable power
components.
Table I shows values of total harmonic distortion (THD)
for the phase and neutral currents and displacement power
factor (DPF), power factor (PF) for each of the phases of the
power source before and after applying SAPF. Results show
that SAPF can compensate the power factor to one and the
harmonic currents to zero at the source end.
Figure 13 shows the instantaneous three phase power by
SDM and p-q theory respectively for a second set of load, Load
Set B. The specialty of this load set is that the currents in phase
a, b and c encounter changes after 0.2, 0.25 and 0.3 seconds
respectively (fig. 7). The analysis with this type of varying
load also shows that SAPF successfully results constant active

Fig. 8. The three phase compensation currents for load set A (SDM-SAPF)
(a)ica (a)icb and (a)icc

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Simulink Model Developed for SDM

Simulink Model for Instantaneous Power Theory (p-q theory)

Fig. 13.

Overall source power after compensation for load set B

Fig. 9. The three phase compensation currents for load set A (p-q SAPF)
(a)ica (a)icb and (a)icc

power.
Comparing the performance of the two methods it is realized that digital control based on p-q theory is much faster
than compensation using SDM. The resultant source current
waveforms show that p-q theory compensates the undesirable
current components within 1st cycle whereas SDM takes about
14 cycles (approximately 0.23 seconds for 50 Hz source).
So for faster power quality improvement digital control is
preferable to SDM.
Fig. 10. The three phase source currents after compensation for load A
(SDM-SAPF) (a)isa (a)isb and (a)isc

VI. C ONCLUSION
Faster power quality improvement is a prerequisite for
industrial and consumer equipments and SAPF offers better
performance than other state-of-the-art compensation methods.
It improves power quality by significantly reducing the harmonic components in currents and correcting the power factor.
The results of simulations performed in this work shows that
digital control of SAPF based on p-q theory provide faster
power quality improvement than SDM technique. In summing,
digital control of SAPF should be the preferred choice for
power quality improvement.
R EFERENCES

Fig. 11. The three phase source currents after compensation for load A (p-q
SAPF)(a)isa (a)isb and (a)isc

Fig. 12.

Overall source power after compensation for load set A

TABLE I

THD, PF

AND

Condition
Phase
THD(%)
PF
DPF

DPF

OF SOURCE BEFORE AND AFTER COMPENSATION

Before Compensation
a
b
c
43.52
0.00
48.34
0.3925 0.7036 0.9004
1.00
0.7036
1.00

After
a
0.00
1.00
1.00

Compensation
b
c
0.00
0.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00

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