Power factor-corrected transformerless three-phase PWM converter for UPS applications

This thesis describes the research of a new transformerless three phase PWM converter for uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) applications. The removal of the bulky three phase transformer in larger power UPS can provide a significant saving in weight and cost of the overall system. The converter consists of a new four-wire rectifier coupled with a four-wire inverter via a dc bus. The supply and load neutral may be connected together without any neutral current flowing into the utility regardless of the load on the inverter. This allows the load to be at the same potential as the utility. The rectifier, inverter and complete UPS and control system are described in detail and simulation results are used extensively to back up the theory. An experimental prototype of the four-wire rectifier provides further confirmation of the principles. A further proposal to digitize the system is given. This would reduce the size of the required control circuit and simplify the hardware requirements

Three-phase four-leg flying-capacitor multi-level inverter-based active power filter for unbalanced current operation.

This study describes a new application of flying capacitor multi-level inverters whereby a three-phase, four-leg three-level inverter is used for harmonic current cancellation and unbalanced current compensation in a four-wire system. A direct three-dimensional-pulse-width modulation (3D-PWM) scheme is developed to deal with the increased state redundancy in the four-leg flying capacitor multi-level inverter. Test results show much superior performance in the four-leg case, which may allow the use of smaller DC supply capacitors. A new modified dead-beat current control algorithm is proposed and combined successfully with the 3D-PWM modulation technique in a hardware demonstrator of a complete active filter

Power quality improvements through power electronic interfaced distributed generation

In low-voltage distribution networks a large amount of single-phase nonlinear loads are connected. This leads to the combined presence of power system unbalance and harmonic distortion. The research presented in this paper focusses on these steady-state power quality problems. It uses a harmonic load flow program, implemented in symmetrical components, to investigate the influence of several single-phase inverter control strategies used to connect any kind of primary energy source to the grid. The influence of these single-phase distributed generation units in the three-phase four-wire distribution network is discussed by means of two recently formulated indicators that combine the power system unbalance and the existing harmonics

P-resonant control for the neutral point of three phase inverter

In this project, a Proportional resonant (PR) current controller is proposed to maintain a balanced neutral point for a three-phase four wire inverter, which can be used in microgrid applications. The neutral-point circuit consists of a conventional neutral leg and a split DC link. The neutral point is balanced with respect to the two DC source terminals (as required, in neutral-point clamped three-level converters) even when the neutral current is large so that the inverter can be connected to an unbalanced load. The controller, designed by using the Proportional resonant control techniques, which attain eliminate for the current flowing through the split capacitors. This leads to very small variation of the neutral point from the mid-point of the DC source, in spite of the possibly large neutral current. The simulation of inverter circuit, neutral-point and P-resonant has been performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. The simulation results confirm the validity of the proposed method, which can be seen as a promising that ensure P-resonant control suitable for microgrid applications

Power Flow in a Load-Current Sensorless Shunt Active Power Filter

In this paper, power flow analysis of a three-phase four-wire system with a shunt active power filter in steady state is presented. The analysis begins with a mathematical model of the power inverter and continues to find the relationship of the real and imaginary power as well as zero sequence power in the grid, loads, and the inverter (AC and DC sides) for successful compensation. The system includes mixed non-linear loads with significant unbalanced components. The filter consists of a three-phase current-controlled voltage source inverter (CC-VSI) with a filter inductance at the AC output and a DC-bus capacitor. The CC-VSI is operated to directly control the AC grid current to be sinusoidal and in phase with the grid voltage. Computer simulation results verify the concept of the filter and the power flow

Control strategy for selective compensation of power quality problems through three-phase four-wire UPQC

This paper presents a novel control strategy for selective compensation of power quality (PQ) problems, depending upon the limited rating of voltage source inverters (VSIs), through a unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) in a three-phase four-wire distribution system. The UPQC is realized by the integration of series and shunt active power filters (APFs) sharing a common dc bus capacitor. The shunt APF is realized using a three-phase, four-leg voltage source inverter (VSI), while a three-leg VSI is employed for the series APF of the three-phase four-wire UPQC. The proposed control scheme for the shunt APF, decomposes the load current into harmonic components generated by consumer and distorted utility. In addition to this, the positive and negative sequence fundamental frequency active components, the reactive components and harmonic components of load currents are decomposed in synchronous reference frame (SRF). The control scheme of the shunt APF performs with priority based schemes, which respects the limited rating of the VSI. For voltage harmonic mitigation, a control scheme based on SRF theory is employed for the series APF of the UPQC. The performance of the proposed control scheme of the UPQC is validated through simulations using MATLAB software with its Simulink and Power System Block set toolboxes

A novel control strategy of three-phase, four-wire UPQC for power quality improvement

The current paper presents a novel control strategy of a three-phase, four-wire Unified Power Quality (UPQC) to improve power quality. The UPQC is realized by the integration of series and shunt active power filters (APF) sharing a common dc bus capacitor. The realization of shunt APF is carried out using a three-phase, four-leg Voltage Source Inverter (VSI), and the series APF is realized using a three-phase, three-leg VSI. To extract the fundamental source voltages as reference signals for series APF, a zero-crossing detector and sample-and-hold circuits are used. For the control of shunt APF, a simple scheme based on the real component of fundamental load current (I CosΦ) with reduced numbers of current sensors is applied. The performance of the applied control algorithm is evaluated in terms of power-factor correction, source neutral current mitigation, load balancing, and mitigation of voltage and current harmonics in a three-phase, four-wire distribution system for different combinations of linear and non-linear loads. The reference signals and sensed signals are used in a hysteresis controller to generate switching signals for shunt and series APFs. In this proposed UPQC control scheme, the current/voltage control is applied to the fundamental supply currents/voltages instead of fast-changing APF currents/voltages, thus reducing the computational delay and the required sensors. MATLAB/Simulink-based simulations that support the functionality of the UPQC are obtained

A simplified control algorithm for three-phase, four-wire unified power quality conditioner

In this paper, a simplified control algorithm for a three-phase, four-wire unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) is presented to compensate for supply voltage distortions/unbalance, supply current harmonics, the supply neutral current, the reactive power and the load unbalance as well as to maintain zero voltage regulation (ZVR) at the point of common coupling (PCC). The UPQC is realized by the integration of series and shunt active filters (AFs) sharing a common dc bus capacitor. The shunt AF is realized using a three-phase, four leg voltage source inverter (VSI) and the series AF is realized using a three-phase, three leg VSI. A dynamic model of the UPQC is developed in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment and the simulation results demonstrating the power quality improvement in the system are presented for different supply and load conditions

A four-leg buck inverter for three-phase four-wire systems with the function of reducing DC-bus ripples

Three-phase four-wire inverters are usually used to feed unbalanced three-phase loads with neutral currents. The unbalanced three-phase loads also bring to second-order ripples in the DC bus, which should be mitigated by bulky DC-bus capacitors to improve the system performance. In this case, the DC capacitance is designed for the second-order ripple frequency instead of the switching frequency, so it can not be reduced even when SiC MOSFETs are adopted to achieve high switching frequency. Although various topologies of three-phase four-wire inverters has been proposed to provide the path for neutral currents, they cannot handle the second-order ripples. Also, some active power decoupling solutions can be adopted, but they require additional active swithes and components, which increases the cost of the system. In this paper, a four-leg buck inverter is proposed, which consists of four DC-DC buck converters. Each buck converter is independently controlled. This topology can not only provide neutral currents, but also reduce the second-order ripples in the DC bus with active power decoupling control. The proposed topology doesn't require any additional active switches comparing to the conventional topologies with neutral legs. The effectiveness of proposed topology is verified by the simulation in MATLAB/Simulink

Sequence-decoupled resonant control of three-phase grid-interfacing inverter for local voltage support under unbalanced load

This paper considers a three-phase four-wire grid-interfacing voltage-source inverter with local unbalanced and distorting loads. A sequence-decoupled resonant control strategy is proposed to support the local voltage on top of conventional active power regulation. The local voltage at the point of common connection, which is traditionally used for grid synchronization for distributed generators, is also used for sensing unbalanced and harmonic voltages. Therefore, measurements of load currents for unbalanced and harmonic compensation can be eliminated with the proposed approach.</p