2009 International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications

Development of an Intelligent Decision Support System for Determining the

Efficiency of Shunt Active Power Filter
*Seref Sagiroglu, Member IEEE, **Ramazan Bayindir, Member IEEE,
**Orhan Kaplan, **Hamdi Tolga Kahraman
*
Gazi University, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Computer Engineering Department
**Gazi University, Faculty of Technical Education, Electrical Education Department
{ss, bayindir, okaplan, hamditolga}@gazi.edu.tr
(APF)active power filters have been developed to
eliminate passive filters limitations and to solve power
systems problems [8-16]. APF can be classified on the
topology used as series, shunt or hybrid filters [17]. Shunt
or series APF can compensate only specific power quality
problems due to operation restriction [18]. Therefore each
parameters of power system independently affect the
filter selection. In other words the selection of the type of
APF to improve power quality depends on the source of
the problem [19]. Since filter selection depend on many
parameters of the power system, IDSS can be used in this
process.
In this paper, an IDSS has been developed for
determining the suitability rate of the three phase APF on
the power system. The system developed converts the
parameters, which are power factor, neutral current, phase
currents, phase voltages, total harmonic distortion (THD)
value of currents and voltages, into the useful data at rulebased inference mechanism then the useful data are
evaluated in Nave Bayes classifier. Thus a low cost
decision support system has been developed to guide the
users in the suitability rate of three phase shunt APF in
filter selection process.
In Section 2, types of APF are described as overview.
Rule- based inference mechanism and Shunt APF
classifier are explained in section 3. In section 4, the
experimental study is given. In Section 5, the results of
the study are given and the work is concluded.

Abstract
Active power systems have been used in power system
intensively. Selection of a suitable filter is very important
to solve power quality problems perfectly. Since filter
selection depend on a lot of parameters of power system,
decision support systems can be employed in filter
selection. In this paper, An Intelligent Decision Support
System, IDSS is proposed. The system determines
efficiency of three phase shunt active power filter for the
power quality problems. The system developed converts
the parameters obtained into the useful data at rule-based
inference mechanism then the useful data are evaluated
in Nave Bayes classifier. Thus a low cost decision
support system has been developed to guide the users in
the rate of suitability of three phase shunt active power
for solution the power quality problems.
Key words: Intelligent Decision Support System, Shunt
Active Power Filter, Rule-Based Inference, Nave Bayes
Classification

1. Introduction
In recent years, loads contained power electronic
equipments and non-linear electronic devices cause
several problems in power systems. Some of these
problems are distortions in voltage and current
waveforms called as harmonics [1]. Harmonics bring
about several problems in consumer products and in
power systems, such as higher losses, capacitor bank
failure, extra neutral current, low power factor, shortened
usage time of electronics equipments, errors on zero
crossing sensitive control systems and resonance [2-4].
Owing to low cost and simple structure, the shunt passive
filters including capacitor, inductor and resistor have
traditionally been used to reduce harmonic pollution and
to improve power factor [5]. However, they have a lot of
disadvantages, such as fixed compensation, resonance
and large size [6,7]. Types of Active Power Filters
978-0-7695-3926-3/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICMLA.2009.76

2. Active Power Filter

2.1. Series APF
The series active filter is connected in serial with the
distribution line through a matching isolation transformer.
[20, 21]. The operation principle of series APF is pulse
with modulation signals (PWM) generated by
adding/subtracting to/from source voltage to maintain
pure sinusoidal waveform of grid voltage. Due to the
operation principle, the series APFs acts as a harmonic
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isolator between the nonlinear load and the grid. The

series APF is suitable to compensate harmonic of voltage,
balance the three phase voltage and regulate three phase
voltage. The series APFs, as compared with the other
types of active filter, are the fewer used because they
have to carry high load currents. The block diagram of
series APF is shown in Figure 1.
Is

2.2. Hybrid APF

Combinations active shunt and passive shunt filter or
active series and passive shunt filter are known as hybrid
filters [17]. The harmonics filtering task is divided
between the passive filter and the APF. The passive filters
suppress high order harmonics while the APF cancels
lower order harmonics. Figure 3 shows hybrid filters most
widely used in literature.

IL

C DC

C DC

Figure 1. The Series APF

2.2. Shunt APF

The shunt APF is the most used type of APF in
literature [8-12]. The shunt APF has been used to
improve power factor and filter harmonic currents
generated by nonlinear loads. The shunt APF acts as a
current source. The current components which are equal
magnitude of current harmonics and opposite in phase
injects to system. Thus it forces to be sinusoidal
waveform of source current. The relationship between
these currents is given in Equation 1. The shunt APF
comprises semi conductor switches, DC capacitor and
line inductor. Figure 2 is illustrated the shunt APF.
Ic=IL-Is

a) The series APF plus shunt passive filter

Is

IL

C DC

(1)
Is

IL

b) The series APF plus shunt passive filter

Ic

Figure 3. The Hybrid APF

3. Development of Intelligent Decision Support

System for Power Systems

C DC

IDSS determines the suitability of shunt APF for an

electrical power system. This determination process is
shown in Figure 4.

Figure 2. The Shunt APF

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Figure 4. General block diagram of intelligent decision support system

Table 1. The electrical system parameters, the rules and
labels were declared by the expert

3.1. Rule-based inference mechanism and Shunt

APF Classifier

Parameters
CH

Seven parameters are considered in the classification

process. Firstly, the values of these parameters are
measured from the electrical system by the electrical
measurement devices. Secondly the values are converted
to useful labels by the Rule-based Inference
Mechanism [22]. Lastly the labels are used to determine
the suitability rate of Shunt APF for electrical system,
which has these electrical labels, in the Nave Bayes
Classifier [23].
Rule- based inference mechanism: A rule-based
inference mechanism was developed to convert the data
of electrical system to useful labels for example the value
of power coefficient was labeled as normal or lower
considering the declared rules for power coefficient. The
rules were declared by the expert about the electrical
power systems.
Converting of the electrical system data to useful
labels: The power system parameters are Current
Harmonic (CH), Power Factor (PF), Neutral Current
(NC), Load Balance (LB), Voltage Regulation
(VR), Voltage Balance (VB), and Voltage Harmonic
(VH). The values of these parameters were used to
determine the labels in the rule-based inference
mechanism. These labels were calculated using the rules
in the Table 1 as following:

PF
NC
LB

VR

VB

VH

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Rules and Labels

THD Value of Current Harmonic
THD >%5 True
THD <=%5 False
PF<0.98 low
PF >= 0.98 normal
Neutral Current =0 Normal
Neutral Current =! 0 High
Three Phase Currents (Phase R, Phase S, Phase
T)
R=S=T Currents are balanced
R=!S or S=!T Currents are unbalanced
Measured Three phase voltages (Phase R, Phase
S, Phase T)
Nominal Three phase voltages (Phase R*, Phase
S*, Phase T*)
R>R* Regulation is High
R=R* Regulation is Normal
R<R* Regulation is Low
Regulations of the Phase S and Phase T is
calculated as above
Three Phase Voltages (Phase R, Phase S, Phase
T)
R=S=T Voltages are balanced
R=!S or S=!T Voltages are unbalanced
THD Value of Voltage Harmonic
THD >%3 True
THD <=%3 False

3.2. Classification of electrical system by the

Nave Bayes Classifier

vNB = arg max P(v j ) P( f i | v j )

The Nave Bayes classifier is a Bayesian model. It

declares the conditional probability of each of a set of
attributes for a given observed target in points of the
known probability of each attribute and the conditional
probability of the target [22-24]. The conditional
probability distribution for the Shunt APF is shown in
Table 2.

4 Experimental Studies
Figure 5 illustrates Web-based IDSS. Users obtain
parameters of power system from electrical test and
measurement devices and then submit the parameters to
the Web Server by using their web browser. Lastly IDSS
evaluates the submitted parameters and returns results to
the users through the Web Server.

v j V

(3)

f i z

Users

Table 2. The conditional probability distribution for the

Internet

Shunt APF

Web Server

Parameters
CH

Labels

True
False
Normal
PF
Low
High
NC
Normal
Balanced
LB
Unbalanced
Normal
VR
High
Low
Balanced
VB
Unbalanced
True
VH
False
Frequency the take place of
Shunt APF in the MS, S,
LS and MU

MS
6/8
2/8
2/8
6/8
2/8
6/8
6/8
2/8
1
0
0
4/8
4/8
0
1

S
5/8
3/8
3/8
5/8
2/8
6/8
6/8
2/8
1
0
0
6/8
2/8
3/8
5/8

LS
2/9
7/9
6/9
3/9
3/9
6/9
2/9
7/9
7/9
1/9
1/9
8/9
1/9
7/9
2/9

MU
1/9
8/9
8/9
1/9
0
1
1
0
4/9
3/9
2/9
5/9
4/9
8/9
1/9

8/34

8/34

9/34

9/34

Intelligent Decision
Support System

Electrical System and

Measurement Devices

Figure 5. The Web-based IDSS developed

The system designed has a user-friendly and
interactive interface. It provides guidance to users about
the range of operating parameters. The interface of the
IDSS is given in Figure 6.

According to the labels of electrical system

parameters, which calculated by the rule-based inference
mechanism, the Nave Bayes algorithm classifies the
electrical system as Shunt APF is the most suited (MS),
Shunt APF is suited (S), Shunt APF is less suited
(LS), or Shunt APF is the most unsuited (MU). Bayes
theory [24]:

( )

Figure 6. User interface of the IDSS

If each target value is represented by v j :

p (v j ) estimate p(v j )

An electrical system for a sample case has been tested

in the developed system. In the sample case, the suitable
status of the system for "Shunt APF" is tested for CH:
true, PC: low, NC: normal, LB: balanced, VR: low, VB:
unbalanced and VH: false.
Classification of the suitable status of the system as
most suited, suited, less suited or most unsuited
for sample case k according to the conditional

(1)

If each feature degree is represented by f i of each feature

set of f , which is the effective input set on target value;

f : p ( f i | v j ) estimate p ( f i | v j )

(2)

Classification of new instance ( z ):

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probability distribution for the Shunt APF are given in

Table 2. The parameters labeled for electrical system are
calculated as:

k NB =

arg max
k j( MS,S , NS , MU )

designed is user-friendly, so users can easily employ the

IDSS to reduce the power quality problem.

6. References

P(k j )

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As a result of the calculation given in Table 3, suitable

status of system for "Shunt APF" is classified as MS.

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P (CH = True| MS-S-LS-MU) P(PF= Low | MS-S-LSMU) P(NC = Normal | MS-S-LS-MU) P(LB =
Unbalanced | MS-S-LS-MU) P(VR = Normal | MS-SLS-MU) P(VB = Balanced | MS-S-LS-MU) P(VH =
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P(MS/S/LS/MU): PMS, PS, PLS, PMU

PMS:
(6/8)*(6/8)*(6/8)*(2/8)*(1)*(4/8)*(1)*(8/34)=0.0124

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(5/8)*(5/8)*(6/8)*(2/8)*(1)*(6/8)*(5/8)*(8/34)=0.0080

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PLS:
(2/9)*(3/9)*(6/9)*(7/9)*(7/9)*(8/9)*(2/9)*(9/34)=0.00
15

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(1/9)*(1/9)*(1)*(1)*(4/9)*(5/9)*(1/9)*(9/34)=0.0001

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5. Conclusions
In this paper, an IDSS has been developed to determine
the rate of suitability of three phase active power filter for
solution power quality problems. One of the important
problems has been analyzed of the power system in terms
of determination of using shunt active power filter to
solve power quality problems. Thanks to the IDSS, the
parameters of power system can be evaluated easily using
the user-friendly form-based interface. The IDSS converts
the power system parameters to useful labels by using the
rule-based inference mechanism. These labels are
evaluated by the Naive-Bayes Classifier and classified as
most suited, suited, less suited or most unsuited
for solution of power system problems.

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