Power Quality Improvement Using UPQC (Unified Power Quality Conditioner)

1. Introduction

Nowadays, non-linear loads are the most commonly part of the home appliances, office buildings,
industrial facilities, and service facilities. The Power Quality problems can be existed effected by these
applications in the form of harmonics, reactive power, flicker and resonance. Moreover, the technological Commented [a1]: Active Power Conditioner to
evolution in non-conventional power generation using the highly sophisticated devices in the end users
equipment also contributes to increase this problem. Reduction of harmonic currents, generated by
harmonic voltages in the supply side and non-linear loads in the end user side, is one of the important
things to improve the power quality. Commented [a2]: Harmonic power compensation capacity of
shunt active power filter
Figure 1 shows the power system with a sinusoidal source operating with a non-linear load. The non-
linear load current (iL) contains harmonics. This current impacts the harmonics in the line current (iS), so it
becomes the serious damage and greatly pollutes the power system. It deteriorates power quality by
causing poor power factor, increasing THD, and creating electromagnetic interference.

R L
Non-Linear
Grid System Load

Figure 1 System with a non-linear load

There are two kinds problem which probably occur by the presence of harmonics current, short-term
effects and long-term effects. The first problem is correlated with interference problem in communication
system, performance degradation from the sensitive equipment or even the malfunction. Another one
effects are additional losses in distribution system, thermal nature, and causing reduction of the mean
lifetime of equipments. Therefore, the power quality problem issue becomes an object of great concern
related to service to the end consumers.

The international standards from IEEE-519 and IEC 61000 concerning power quality state that there is a
limit for harmonic value produced from electrical equipment and facilities, and also express bias limits to
the supply voltage. In fact, the European COPPER Institute Leonard Energy Initiative report that the
costs estimated in Europe related to power quality problems are more than 150.000.000 per year. Thus,
the solution should be provided to mitigate the disturbance in the electrical systems, boosting their power
quality.

Passive filter is one of many solutions to solve harmonic current problems, but it still presents several
drawbacks. It can only filter the certain frequency previously assigned for; its operation cannot be limited
to a specific load; and it may produce the unpredictable results cause of the interaction between the
passive filters and another loads. Research engineers have discovered various solutions based on power Commented [a3]: Active Filters with Control Based on
the p-q Theory
electronics to solve power quality problems to handle these drawbacks recently. These applications are
usually named as Active Power Conditioners. Equipments of such devices are Series Active Power Filter,
Shunt Active Power Filter, and Unified Power Filter Conditioner (UPQC).
When the conditioners are connected series or parallel with the grid power system its called Active
Power Filter. Series Active Power Filter is connected series, and Shunt Active Power Filter is connected
parallel with the power grid. The Series Active Power Filter behaves as a voltage-source connected series
with the power grid, compensating voltage sags (short duration reduction in voltage which can be caused
by a short circuit, overload or starting of electric motors), swells (momentary increase in voltage, happens
when a heavy load turns off in a power system), and flicker (visible change in brightness of a lamp due to
rapid fluctuations in the voltage of the power supply). On the other hand, the Shunt Active Power Filter
works as a control current-source eliminating the unwanted components from the load currents, so the
current in the power grid still in sinusoidal and in phase with the system voltage. Generally, the Series
Active Power Filter is the most promising to tackle the voltage-related problems and the Shunt Active
Power Filter is the most suitable to overcome the current-related problems. Commented [a4]: Enhancing Electric Power Quality Using
UPQC_A Comprehensive Overview
UPQC is an integration of Series APF and Shunt APF with a common independent DC bus. The Series
APF is controlled in voltage control mode such that it generates a voltage and inserts in series with the
line to get a sinusoidal, free form distortion and at the desired magnitude voltage at Point of Common
Coupling (PCC). Similarly, the Shunt APF in UPQC is controlled in current control mode such that it
injects a current which is equal to the set value of the reference current generated from the UPQC control
algorithm. Additionally, it plays an important role to achieve the good performance of UPQC by
maintaining the DC bus voltage at the reference value.

2. Shunt Active Power Filter

The Shunt APF is a device which can compensate both of harmonic current and power factor.
Additionally, in three-phase four wire systems it allows to balance the three phase currents and to
eliminate the current in the neutral wire. Figure 2 shows the electrical scheme of a Shunt APF for a three-
phase power system. The power stage is, basically, a voltage-source inverter equipped by a capacitor in
the DC side, controlled in a way that it acts like a current-source. The control calculates the reference
current (i*ca, i*cb, i*cc) used by inverter to generate the compensation currents (ica, icb, icc) from the
measured values of the load phase voltage (va, vb, vc) and load current (ia, ib, ic).

R L
Grid System

Non-linear
load

Controller
Vdc

Vdc

Pulse
Switching

Figure 2 Shunt APF for a three-phase power system

3. p-q Theory

There are various control methods to generate the reference current waveforms for the Shunt APF.
Control based on p-q theory is one of the popular methods, which is easy to implement and provide
satisfactory reduction in THD. The p-q theory is based on a set of instantaneous powers defined in the
time domain. Because of there is no restriction on voltage and current waveforms, and also it can be
applied in three phase system either with or without neutral wire, this theory become valid in both of
steady state and transient state. Generally, to implement this theory is by transforming the voltage and the
current from the abc into 0 frame and calculating the instantaneous power within this frame.

3.1 The Clarke Transformation

The 0 transformation graphs the three phases voltage and current on abc frame va, vb, vc and ia, ib, ic into
the instantaneous value on the 0 coordinate. Because of the 0 coordinate can separate zero-sequence
components from the abc-phases, and there is no zero-sequence component in current and voltage in
three-phase system with the balance voltage, the Clarke Transformation can be expressed as
1 1
2
1
2 2
[ ] = 3 [ 3 3
] [ ] (1)

0 2 2

1 1
1
2 2 2
[ ] = 3 [ 3 3
] [ ] (2)
0 2
2

3.2 Power Calculation

This part calculates the instantaneous active and reactive load powers using p-q theory. The calculation is
following the block diagram seen in Figure 3. The three phase instantaneous real and reactive power can
be calculated as

= + (3)

= (4)

Where p and q can be separated into an average powers and oscillating powers

= + (5)

= + (6)

Where and are calculated from positive sequence components of the non linear load current and and
from the harmonic components of non linear load current. The oscillating components of and the
whole should be generated by Shunt APF to compensate the harmonic current.
 Figure 3 Current controller block diagram

The required current for compensating the harmonic can be calculated by following equation

1
[ ] = 2 [ ] [ ] (7)
2 +

The and will be converted back to abc frame by using inverse The Clarke Transformation as

1 0

2
1 3
[ ] = 3 2 2 [ ] (8)

1 3
[ 2 2 ]

This reference current is compared with the inverter current and the switching pulses are generated using
ramp comparison as will be explained later.

4. Pulse Switching

Another important part to generate the compensation current from the inverter is the Current Control
Pulse Width Modulated (CC-PWM). The main goal of the control scheme in a CC-PWM is to make the
current following the reference current generated from the calculation above. This will be achieved by
comparing the command and the measured instantaneous values of the phase currents. The switching
states, generated from the current control, will be delivered to the inverter power devices to generate the
compensation current.

One of several methods CC-PWW is ramp-comparison method. The ramp comparison current controller,
also called the stationary controller, equipped with three PI error compensators to generate the voltage
commands uA, uB, uC for a three-phase sinusoidal PWM as seen in Figure 4. To keep with the principle of
sinusoidal PWM, the voltage commands will be compared with the triangular carrier signal to generate
control signals SA, SB, SC for the pulse switching. Comparing with the conventional CC-PWM, this
method is quite different because the output of the current ripple will influence the switching time. Commented [a5]: Current Control Techniques for Three-Phase
Voltage-Source PWM Converters: A Survey
 Figure 4 Ramp-comparison PWM

5. The Latest Progress

The Shunt APF is a first part from the whole UPQC application. This Shunt APF part has been simulated
in PSIM to verify the function of this application.

Figure 5 PSIM circuit

All the calculation the instantaneous real and reactive power is following equation (3) and (4). Generating
the current reference is following the equation (7) and (8) based on block diagram on Figure 3. All the
simulation data is presented in below table.

Supply Voltage 380 V (p-p rms), 50 Hz

DC Link Voltage 800 V
DC Capacitor 9900 F
Non linear load 60
 Figure 6 Simulation result

As can be seen from Figure 6, the source current (first part) can be compensated to be sinusoidal form as
the Shunt APF activated at 0.04 s. The THD is still 27%, which is high above IEEE 519-1992 standard at
5%, so it still needs more improvement.

At this step, the feature of this Shunt APF to maintain the DC bus has not been included because there
must be correction to the simulation block diagram. Furthermore, the ramp comparison current controller
used for this simulation still in the basic method, it can be improved by adjusting the integral part of the
PI compensator to minimizes the error, and also resetting the proportional gain of that ramp comparison
current controller.