Real-time control of shunt active power filter under distorted grid voltage and unbalanced load condition using self-tuning filter

In this paper, an alternative control method is proposed to improve the harmonic suppression efficiency of the active power filter in a distorted and an unbalanced power system to compensate for the perturbations caused by the unbalanced non-linear loads. The proposed method uses a self-tuning filter (STF) to process the grid voltage in order to provide a uniform reference voltage to obtain the correct angular position of the phase locked loop. Moreover, the required compensation currents are obtained by implementing another STF in the transformed set of currents in order to separate the fundamental and the harmonic currents. This allows the calculation of a precise reference current for the unbalanced, the non-linear and the variable load conditions. The proposed control method gives an adequate compensating current reference even for a non-ideal voltage and unbalanced current conditions. The real-time control of the filter under the distorted and the unbalanced power system is developed in an RT-LAB real-time platform. The results obtained in the software-in-the-loop configuration are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control technique.