Performance evaluation of different harmonic mitigation techniques using multi level inverter based shunt active power filter

Abstract

In most of the industrial and commercial applications, the power quality issues are caused by the non-linear characteristics of power electronic equipment. These power quality issues include flickers, harmonics, voltage swell/sag and voltage imbalances. Moreover, the power quality issues result in regular increase of current imbalance and harmonic emissions along with increased compensation of reactive power. Due to these problems, the energy distributors imposed certain regulations to enable the protection against harmonic problems. newlineIn the recent decades, the influence of factors like increasing demand of efficient solutions for power quality problems, the revolution in digital signal processing production and the power electronics industry development has encouraging the researchers to enhance the measures of mitigating the PQ issues. This paves the way for the introduction of Active Power Filters (APFs) or Active compensators. The APFs mainly perform reactive power compensation along with the compensation of harmonic currents and voltages. Among various APFs, the Shunt Active Power Filter suits well in the process of mitigating the issues of harmonic currents, which occur in power grids. It generates the harmonic currents, which are opposite in phase and equal in magnitude to the circulating harmonics in the grid. The Multilevel inverters are regarded as the ideal power circuit for the shunt active power filters in the process of harmonics mitigation. Among various multilevel inverters, the cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter is highly efficient in providing improved power quality without any fluctuations. newline