Improving Power Quality by a Four-Wire Shunt Active Power Filter: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents the use of a three-phase four-wire shunt active power filter to improve the power quality in the Department of Industrial Electronics of a large enterprise from Romania. The specificity is given by the predominant existence of single-phase consumers (such as personal computers, printers, lighting and AC equipment). In order to identify the power quality indicators and ways to improve them, an A-class analyzer was used to record the electrical quantities and energy parameters in the point of common coupling (PCC) with the nonlinear loads for 27 h. The analysis shows that, in order to improve the power quality in PCC, three goals must be achieved: the compensation of the distortion power, the compensation of the reactive power and the compensation of the load unbalance. By using the conceived three-leg shunt active power filter, controlled through the indirect current control method in an original variant, the power quality at the supply side is very much improved. In the proposed control algorithm, the prescribed active current is obtained as a sum of the loss current provided by the DC voltage and the equivalent active current of the unbalanced load. The performance associated with each objective of the compensation is presented and analyzed. The results show that all the power quality indicators meet the specific standards and regulations and prove the validity of the proposed solution.

Keywords

• power quality
• shunt active power filter
• three-phase four-wire system
• distortion power
• unbalanced load