Digital Current-Control Schemes

The paper is about comparing the performance of digital signal processor-based current controllers for three-phase active power filters. The wide use of nonlinear loads, such as front-end rectifiers connected to the power distribution systems for dc supply or inverter-based applications, causes significant power quality degradation in power distribution networks in terms of current/voltage harmonics, power factor, and resonance problems. Passive LC filters (together with capacitor banks for reactive power compensation) are simple, low-cost, and high-efficiency solution

Selective harmonic-compensation control for single-phase active power filter with high harmonic rejection

(c) 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.This paper presents a linear current control scheme for single-phase active power filters. The approach is based on an outer voltage loop, an inner current loop, and a resonant selective harmonic compensator. The design of the control parameters is carried out using conventional linear techniques (analysis of loop gain and other disturbance-rejection transfer functions). The performance of the proposed controller is evaluated and compared with two reference controllers: a basic control and an advanced repetitive control. In comparison with these controllers, the proposed control scheme provides additional attenuation to the harmonics coming from the load current, the grid voltage, and the reference signal, resulting in a grid current with lower harmonic distortion. Experimental results are reported in order to validate this paper.Peer ReviewedPostprint (updated version

Universal fractional-order design of linear phase lead compensation multirate repetitive control for PWM inverters

Repetitive control (RC) with linear phase lead compensation provides a simple but very effective control solution for any periodic signal with a known period. Multirate repetitive control (MRC) with a downsampling rate can reduce the need of memory size and computational cost, and then leads to a more feasible design of the plug-in repetitive control systems in practical applications. However, with fixed sampling rate, both MRC and its linear phase lead compensator are sensitive to the ratio of the sampling frequency to the frequency of interested periodic signals: (1) MRC might fails to exactly compensate the periodic signal in the case of a fractional ratio; (2) linear phase lead compensation might fail to enable MRC to achieve satisfactory performance in the case of a low ratio. In this paper, a universal fractional-order design of linear phase lead compensation MRC is proposed to tackle periodic signals with high accuracy, fast dynamic response, good robustness, and cost-effective implementation regardless of the frequency ratio, which offers a unified framework for housing various RC schemes in extensive engineering application. An application example of programmable AC power supply is explored to comprehensively testify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme

Virtual Delay Unit Based Digital nk ± m-order Harmonic Repetitive Controller for PWM Converter

Repetitive control (RC) scheme presents an attractive solution to achieve excellent steady-state tracking error and low total harmonic distortion (THD) for periodic signals. RC can produce extremely large gains at fundamental and each harmonic frequency of reference signal to achieve all harmonics suppression. However, a DC-AC inverter always has uneven THD distribution, e.g. THD concentrates at 4fc ± 1 orders for signal-phase inverter, and 6k ± 1 orders for three-phase inverter. Furthermore, a digital RC requires a integral ratio of the sampling frequency and the reference frequency, whereas the digital control system cannot always meet this requirement. For example, (e.g. 60 Hz reference signal with a 5 kHz sampling frequency, or grid-connected converter under grid frequency fluctuation, etc.). In this paper, virtual delay unit (VDU) based digital nk ± m-order harmonic RC is presented to solve the problems above. The VDU produces a different virtual RC sampling frequency from the system sampling frequency. The virtual sampling frequency for digital RC can be flexibly adjusted based on the integral ratio requirement. The advantage of VDU is that it does not vary the system sampling frequency and it is easy to be realized. Furthermore, nk ± m-order harmonic repetitive controller is selected to provide a selective harmonic compensation (SHC). Experimental results of VDU based nk±m-order harmonic RC for 60 Hz single-phase DC/AC inverter with 5 kHz system sampling frequency are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed VDU-based SHC

Flexible active compensation based on load conformity factors applied to non-sinusoidal and asymmetrical voltage conditions

This study proposes a flexible active power filter (APF) controller operating selectively to satisfy a set of desired load performance indices defined at the source side. The definition of such indices, and of the corresponding current references, is based on the orthogonal instantaneous current decomposition and conformity factors provided by the conservative power theory. This flexible approach can be applied to single- or three-phase APFs or other grid-tied converters, as those interfacing distributed generators in smart grids. The current controller is based on a modified hybrid P-type iterative learning controller which has shown good steady-state and dynamic performances. To validate the proposed approach, a three-phase four-wire APF connected to a non-linear and unbalanced load has been considered. Experimental results have been generated under ideal and non-ideal voltage sources, showing the effectiveness of the proposed flexible compensation scheme, even for weak grid scenarios

Virtual variable sampling discrete fourier transform based selective odd-order harmonic repetitive control of DC/AC converters

This paper proposes a frequency adaptive discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based repetitive control (RC) scheme for DC/AC converters. By generating infinite magnitude on the interested harmonics, the DFT-based RC offers a selective harmonic scheme to eliminate waveform distortion. The traditional DFT-based selective harmonic RC, however, is sensitive to frequency fluctuation since even very small frequency fluctuation leads to a severe magnitude decrease. To address the problem, virtual variable sampling method, which creates an adjustable virtual delay unit to closely approximate a variable sampling delay, is proposed to enable the DFT-based selective harmonic RC to be frequency adaptive. Moreover, a selective odd-order harmonic DFT filter is developed to deal with the dominant odd order harmonic. Because it halves the number of sampling delays in the DFT filter, the system transient response gets nearly 50% improvement. A comprehensive series of experiments of the proposed VVS DFT-based selective odd-order harmonic RC controlled programmable AC power source under frequency variations are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method

Fractional Order and Virtual Variable Sampling Design of Repetitive Control for Power Converters

With the growth of electricity demand and renewable energy power source, power converter becomes a more and more significant component in electrical power systems. The requirement of the power converter controller is to produce an accurate and low-distorted voltage or current under different load conditions. Although the conventional controller can meet the requirement of some applications, it requires accurate knowledge of the system model and cannot provide a satisfactory result especially under nonlinear loads or sudden load change. Repetitive control (RC) presents an attractive solution to achieve excellent steady-state tracking error and low total harmonic distortion for periodic signals, and it is increasingly applied to power converter systems. However, there are still some limitations or requirements of RC when it is applied to power electronics system: first, RC requires the system sampling frequency is a fixed value and needs to be an integral multiple of the reference frequency; second, low controller sampling frequency results in low phase lead compensation resolution in RC, which leads to control inaccuracy; third, conventional RC does not have frequency adaptability to reference frequency fluctuation, and even a small reference frequency fluctuation can lead to severe performance degradation. To overcome the conventional RC limitations, two advanced design methods are proposed in the thesis: fractional order delay and virtual variable sampling. The method of fractional order delay approximates the non-integer delay part by building a finite impulse response filter. This improved method is not only able to be applied on a period delay unit but also on phase-lead compensation. The accurate period delay and phase lead compensation show a noticeable improvement in RC performance. Although fractional order delay can meet the requirement on most of the applications, it also has a minimal adjustable range on the reference frequency. To achieve an essential solution to this problem, the virtual variable sampling (VVS) method is developed. The VVS approximates a variable sampling unit instead of the fixed system unit for RC and its filters, in which RC is able to be frequency adaptive. Comparing with the method of fractional order delay, the VVS method can provide a much more extensive adjustable range on the reference frequency. Based on the system performance under the conventional controller, power converter always has uneven distortion distribution. To further improve the stability and eliminate harmonic distortions efficiently, two selective harmonic RC schemes are introduced - nk ± m order harmonic RC and DFT-based selective harmonic RC. However, these selective RC schemes also suffer from the particular requirement of system sampling frequency and low reference frequency adaptability. Applying VVS methods on these two schemes can effectively present an improvement on their frequency adaptability. To verify the proposed methods’ effectiveness, a complete series of power electronics applications are carried out. These applications include single-phase and three-phase DC/AC power converter, single-phase AC/DC power converter, and single-phase grid-connected power converter. The detailed system modeling and the proposed RC schemes are presented for each power electronics application