IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO.

3, JULY 2007 1743

Study on the Influence of Supply-Voltage Fluctuation

on Shunt Active Power Filter
Wu Longhui, Student Member, IEEE, Zhuo Fang, Zhang Pengbo, Li Hongyu, and
Wang Zhaoan, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractIs there any influence of supply-voltage fluctuation

on the shunt active power filter? Few papers have discussed this
problem. In this paper, based on the instantaneous power balance
of shunt active power filter ac-side and dc-side, a small-signal
model of dc-link voltage control is derived. According to this
small-signal model, the influence of supply-voltage fluctuation on
the dc-link voltage of shunt active power filter is analyzed in detail.
The conclusion is that the supply-voltage fluctuation has influence
on the dc-link voltage of shunt active power filter. Then a feedfor-
ward control method of supply-voltage and compensation current
is proposed to eliminate the influence. The proposed feedforward
control method can be easily implemented in practical. In this
paper, the influence of supply-voltage fluctuation on compensation
performance of shunt active power filter is also analyzed when the
dc-link voltage is constant. From the analysis, it can be concluded
that current controller with PI regulator has better performance
to suppress the influence of the supply-voltage fluctuation. Finally,
the experimental results are given to demonstrate the conclusions.
Index TermsFeedforward control, PI current regulator, shunt
active power filter, supply-voltage fluctuation.
Fig. 1. Topology of SAPF.

I. INTRODUCTION
ITH the proliferation of nonlinear loads such as diode/
W thyristor rectifiers, nonsinusoidal currents degrade
power quality in power transmission/distribution systems [1].
Traditionally, passive filters have been used to eliminate the
harmonic distortion and compensate the reactive power, but
passive filters are bulky, de-tune with age and can resonate
with the supply impedance. As active power filters (APF)
are powerful tools for the compensation not only of current
harmonics produced by distorting loads, but also of reactive
power and unbalance of nonlinear and fluctuating loads [2],
and APF can be smaller, more versatile, better damped, they
are studied widely, and great developments have taken place in
theory and application of APF [3].
The shunt APF (SAPF) is used most widely to eliminate the
current distortion [4]. Fig. 1 shows the topology of load-current
detection type SAPF. Here, denotes the dc-link voltage
regulator, and represents the equivalent resistance of the in-
verter loss, the inductance loss, and the circuit loss.
In Fig. 1, the harmonic component of load current is
obtained through the reference identifier using the current-de-
tection algorithm mentioned in literature [5], and the dc-link
Manuscript received March 28, 2006; revised August 11, 2006. Paper no.
TPWRD-00162-2006.
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and
Power Equipment, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China (e-mail: wlh@mail.
xjtu.edu.cn; zffz@mail.xjtu.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.899786
0885-8977/$25.00 2007 IEEE
voltage regulator is usually a PI regulator. The output of the reg-
ulator is multiplied by phase-lock-loop output
fundamental active current reference
to produce
for dc-link voltage
regulation. The reference of the current controller can be
obtained by adding to , which controls the voltage source
power converter to generate the compensation current using
pulse-width modulation (PWM) with symmetrical triangular
carriers.
Lots of studies have been pursued on SAPF. But in most
studies, the supply voltage is considered as a sinusoidal vari-
able with constant amplitude. However, in some system such as
small rating stand-alone power system, the supply-voltage fluc-
tuation is very serious. Is there any influence of supply-voltage
fluctuation on the SAPF? By now, few papers have discussed
this problem. In this paper, influence of supply-voltage fluctua-
tion on dc-link voltage of SAPF and on performance of SAPF is
discussed in detail. Then an easily implemented method of elim-
inating the fluctuation is proposed. Experiments are also carried
out to demonstrate the proposed method.
II. INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY-VOLTAGE FLUCTUATION
ON DC-LINK VOLTAGE OF SAPF
The power converter used in the SAPF is usually a voltage-
source PWM converter. Therefore, to get better performance of
SAPF, the dc-link voltage should be maintained at a constant
1744 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JULY 2007

where

Fig. 2. Dc-link voltage control of SAPF.

value [6]. It is completed by controlling the SAPF to absorb/re-

generate the active component of fundamental current. Tradi-
tional closed-loop control of the dc-link voltage is shown in
Fig. 2.
In literature [7], a small-signal model of dc-link voltage
control is presented; this model is based on the instantaneous
power balance of SAPF ac-side and dc-side. However, the Then, ac-side instantaneous power of SAPF can be divided
supply-voltage fluctuation is not taken into account in this into the following items.
model. In this section, influence of supply-voltage fluctuation 1) Three-phase instantaneous active power of fundamental
on the SAPF dc-link voltage will be discussed in detail. component can be calculated as
In Fig. 1, ac-side instantaneous power of the SAPF is
(4)

2) Three-phase instantaneous reactive power of fundamental

component can be calculated as

(5)
The dc-side instantaneous power of SAPF is 3) Three-phase instantaneous power of harmonics can be ex-
pressed as (6). Here, assuming that the load is a three-phase
diode with a resistor on dc-side, the harmonic current can
be written as
According to the instantaneous power balance of SAPF ac-side
and dc-side , the following equation can be ob-
tained:

(1)
(6)
In this paper, the influence of amplitude fluctuation of supply- It can be seen that instantaneous power of harmonics fluc-
voltage is discussed, so the supply voltage can be represented as tuates with times of fundamental frequency. However,
the average value in one fundamental cycle is zero. To sim-
plify the analysis, it can be neglected.
(2) 4) Three-phase instantaneous power consumed on is

(7)
The output current of SAPF includes the compensation cur-
5) Three-phase instantaneous power consumed on is
rent and the active component of fundamental current for
dc-link voltage regulation, and the compensation current can
be written as the sum of the reactive component of fundamental
current and the harmonic current . Then the output current (8)
of SAPF can be represented as follows:
From the items 1) 5), the instantaneous power balance of
SAPF in (1) can be obtained as follows:

(3)
(9)
LONGHUI et al.: STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY-VOLTAGE FLUCTUATION ON SHUNT APF 1745

Fig. 3. Small-signal model of the closed-loop control of SAPF dc-link voltage.

Fig. 4. Feedforward control for dc-link voltage regulation.

Assuming the parameters under some steady state are , , The output of Fig. 3 can be written as
, , when added small-signal, they can be represented as

(10)

(16)
Then (9) can be written as
In (16), it can be seen that both the amplitude fluctuation of
the supply voltage and the fluctuation of the compensation
current can cause the fluctuation of SAPF dc-link voltage.
If the dc-link voltage is too low, the output voltage of PWM
converter will not be high enough to ensure the current tracking
result. If the dc-link voltage is too high, it will threaten the safe
(11) operation of the system considering the safe voltage limitation of
semiconductor. At the same time if dc-link voltage is too high, it
In the steady state, the real power injected into the SAPF is will cause the ripple of SAPF output current increase, and then
equal to the power loss of SAPF. Then in steady state, the equa- EMI problem will become serious. So the fluctuation of dc-link
tion of system power balance can be expressed as voltage caused by supply-voltage fluctuation or the compensa-
tion current fluctuation will depress the performance of SAPF.
(12) Take the 50 kVA SAPF as an example, the dc-link capacitor
is 3900 , the dc-link voltage reference is set at 750 V and
If the items above the second order are neglected in (11), the the system efficiency is 95%. When the amplitude of the supply
small-signal equation can be obtained as voltage rises by 30%, within one fundamental cycle the dc-link
voltage may rise by 611 V. In this case, to ensure the safe operation
of the system, the protecting cell of SAPF will cut off the SAPF.
Moreover, the fluctuation of supply voltage will make an im-
(13) pact on the load current. Therefore, the compensation current of
SAPF will fluctuate.
After Laplace transforming, the small-signal model at some
balance point can be obtained, as (14) shows III. PROPOSED FEEDFORWARD CONTROL METHOD
From the analysis above, to achieve high and stable perfor-
mance of SAPF, the fluctuation of the dc-link voltage caused by
(14) supply-voltage fluctuation should be eliminated. In traditional
design of the dc-link voltage regulator as mentioned in liter-
The small-signal model of dc-link control loop in Fig. 2 can ature [7], the supply-voltage fluctuation is not taken into ac-
be written as count. Under the condition of supply-voltage fluctuation, the
regulator should be redesigned. This makes many troubles in
(15) practice. In this paper, an easily implemented feedforward con-
trol method of supply-voltage and compensation current is pre-
where is the value of in the small-signal model. sented, with which redesign of traditional dc-link voltage regu-
Then the small-signal model of the closed-loop control of lator is needless.
SAPF dc-link voltage can be obtained as Fig. 3 shows, where The proposed control method is shown in Fig. 4, where
, , and are the supply-voltage feedforward con-
, . In most cases, is a PI troller and the compensation current feedforward controller,
controller, then . respectively.
1746 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JULY 2007

Fig. 5. Current control block diagram of APF.

The output of Fig. 4 can be expressed as

(17)

When ,
, (17) can be written as:

(18) Fig. 6. Comparison of the closed-loop transfer functions with P and PI current
regulator.

From above analysis, it can be seen that after reasonable de-

signing of the feedforward controller and , the
influence of the supply-voltage fluctuation and the com-
pensation current fluctuation on the dc-link voltage can be
eliminated.
In most control systems of SAPF, the supply voltage is de-
tected for phase lock loop [8], [9], so it is easy to obtain the
fluctuation of supply voltage. And the compensation current
fluctuation can be easily obtained by calculated harmonic cur-
rent reference. Then the proposed feedforward control method
is easy to be implemented in practical SAPF system.

IV. INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY-VOLTAGE FLUCTUATION ON

COMPENSATION PERFORMANCE OF SAPF
Fig. 7. Comparison of the closed-loop transfer functions which reflects the cur-
In this section the influence of supply-voltage fluctuation on rent tracing performance.
compensation performance of SAPF will be discussed. In the
following discussion, the dc-link voltage of SAPF is assumed
When the current regulator is a PI regulator, the closed-
to be constant.
loop transfer function can be deduced as follows:
Fig. 5 shows the block diagram of the SAPF current control
system. Here, is the gain of PWM converter which is
considered as a proportional component [10], is the current
regulator, which is usually a P or a PI regulator. In Fig. 5, the
supply voltage is a disturbance of the current loop. Neglecting (20)
the output current of the dc-link voltage controller and the
harmonic current , the closed-loop transfer function using the Fig. 6 shows the comparison of the closed-loop transfer func-
supply voltage as input can be deduced. tions with P and PI current regulator when other parameters in
When the current regulator is a P regulator, the closed- the system are all the same.
loop transfer function can be deduced as follows: It can be seen that, in high-frequency band, the P and PI con-
trollers have the same characteristics both in the amplitude-fre-
quency response and in the phase-frequency response. However,
(19)
in low-frequency band, the response of P controller to supply
LONGHUI et al.: STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY-VOLTAGE FLUCTUATION ON SHUNT APF
Fig. 8. Control diagram of SAPF.
voltage is approximately a constant value 40 dB, while PI con-
troller has much smaller gain than the P controller. It means that
PI controller has better performance to suppress the influence of
the supply-voltage fluctuation.
If neglecting the output current of dc-link voltage
controller and the source voltage , the closed-loop transfer
function which reflects the current tracing performance can be
deduced.
When the current regulator is a P regulator, the closed-
loop transfer function of the whole system can be written as
follows:
(21)
When the current regulator is a PI regulator, the closed-
loop transfer function of the whole system can be written as
follows:
(22)
Fig. 7 shows bode plots of the closed-loop transfer functions
with P and PI current regulator when other system parameters
are the same. From Fig. 7, it can be seen that, the system has
good performance in current tracing both using the P and PI
current regulator in current controller.
From above analysis, if the dc-link voltage of SAPF is main-
tained at a constant value, the current controller with PI reg-
ulator has better performance to suppress the influence of the
supply-voltage fluctuation. Therefore, in this paper, the PI reg-
ulator is adopted in the current controller.
V. EXPERIMENT VERIFICATION
In order to demonstrate the operation of the PI current reg-
ulator used in the current controller and the proposed feedfor-
ward control method, an experimental system was constructed
as shown in Fig. 1. To simulate the voltage fluctuation, a pro-
grammable AC source is used. The load is three-phase diode
bridge rectifier with resistor in dc-side. The SAPF and load are
parallel connected to the programmable AC source.
1747
A. Control of SAPF
The control diagram of SAPF is shown in Fig. 8. is the
supply voltage and is the RMS of the calculated load har-
monic current which can represent the compensation current of
SAPF. The proposed feedforward control method and the cur-
rent detection algorithm are complemented by a 32-bit floating
point DSPTMS320VC33, by which the precision of calcu-
lation can be ensured. The PI current regulator is used in the
current controller which is implemented by analogy circuit.
Output of proposed feedforward controller is added to
the traditional dc-link voltage regulator to control the fun-
damental active current of SAPF. The current controller, which
uses the current error filtered by a PI regulator as the modulating
signal, performs a sine-triangle PWM voltage modulation of the
power converter.
B. Experimental Results
Fig. 9 is the experimental results without the proposed feed-
forward control method, where is the dc-link voltage, is
the supply voltage, is the current reference, and is output
current of the SAPF. In Fig. 9(a), the supply voltage was sud-
denly decreased from 60 to 30 V, and in Fig. 9(b) the supply
voltage was suddenly increased from 30 to 60 V. It can be seen
that both the decrease and increase of the supply voltage can
cause the fluctuation of SAPF dc-link voltage.
Fig. 10 is the experimental results with the feedforward
control method under the same fluctuation condition of supply
voltage in Fig. 9. Where is the dc-link voltage of SAPF,
is the supply voltage, is the current reference, and is
output current of the SAPF. It can be seen that the proposed
feedforward control method can eliminate the fluctuation of
dc-link voltage effectively when the supply voltage is increased
or decreased suddenly.
Fig. 11 shows the performance of SAPF when the supply-
voltage fluctuates, where is the dc-link voltage, is the
supply voltage, is the load current, and is the source cur-
rent after compensation. It can be seen that the proposed feedfor-
ward control method can eliminated the influence of the supply-
voltage fluctuation on SAPF dc-link voltage. SAPF with the PI
current regulator and proposed feedforward control has good
and stable performance when the supply-voltage fluctuates.
1748 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JULY 2007

Fig. 9. Experiment result without feedforward control (1:U 100 V/div; 2:I Fig. 10. Experiment result with feedforward control (1:U 100 V/div; 2:I
1 V/div; 3:U 75 V/div; 4:I 50 A/div; t: 20 ms/div). (a) Sudden decrease of 1 V/div; 3:U 75 V/div; 4:I 50 A/div; t: 20 ms/div). (a) Sudden decrease of
supply voltage. (b) Sudden increase of supply voltage. supply voltage. (b) Sudden increase of supply voltage.

It should be noticed that in the experiment, the load is con-

stant; therefore, with the fluctuation of supply voltage the load
current in Fig. 11 is also changed, so does the current reference
in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10.

VI. CONCLUSION
In traditional studies on SAPF, the supply voltage is consid-
ered as a sinusoidal variable with constant amplitude. In this
paper, the influence of supply-voltage fluctuation on SAPF is
discussed. Experiments are also carried out. From the analysis
and the experimental results, the following can be concluded.
1) Both the amplitude fluctuation of the supply voltage and
Fig. 11. Performance of SAPF with the proposed feedforward control (1:U
the fluctuation of the compensation current can cause the 200 V/div; 2:I 50 A/div; 3:U 150 V/div; 4:I 25 A/div; t: 40 ms/div).
fluctuation of SAPF dc-link voltage, and then depress the
performance of SAPF. The proposed feedforward control
Maybe there are other influences of supply voltage fluctuation
method of supply voltage and compensation current can
on SAPF. This will be studied in future works.
eliminate this influence. The proposed method can be im-
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Wu Longhui (S05) wan born in Shandong Province,

China, in 1981. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees in 2002 and 2005, respectively, from Xian
Jiaotong University, Xian, China, where he is cur-
rently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Department
of Electrical Engineering. Wang Zhaoan (SM98) was born in Xian, China,
His research interests are power quality improve- in 1945. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from
ment and renewable energy. Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China, in 1970 and
1982, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Osaka
University, Osaka, Japan, in 1989.
From 1970 to 1979, he was an Engineer at Xian
Rectifier Factory. He is now a Professor at Xian Jiao-
tong University. He is engaged in research on power
Zhuo Fang was born in Shanghai, China, on May conversion system, harmonics suppression and reac-
20, 1962. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. de- tive power compensation, and active power filters.
grees from Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China,
in 1984, 1989, and 2001, respectively.
Beginning in 1984, he was a Lecturer with Xian
Jiaotong University, where he is now a Professor. His
areas of research include power electronics, motor
driver control, active power filters, and power quality.