Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Suppression of parallel resonance and mitigation of harmonic distortion

through shunt active power compensation
H.A. Ramos-Carranza a, A. Medina-Ríos b,⇑, J. Segundo c, M. Madrigal d
a
TRACSA S.A.P.I. de C. V. Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico
b
Facultad de Ingeniería Eléctrica, División de Estudios de Posgrado, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Morelia, Mich., Mexico
c
Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, CIEP-FI, San Luis Potosí, S.L.P., Mexico
d
Instituto Tecnológico de Morelia, Morelia, Mich., Mexico

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this contribution a solution to the parallel resonance problem that can be present in practical applica-
Received 2 November 2014 tions of shunt Active Power Filter (APF) compensation is proposed. The proposed solution involves turn-
Received in revised form 6 August 2015 ing the shunt APF scheme of compensation into a Shunt Hybrid Filter (SHF) configuration. A Linear
Accepted 7 August 2015
Quadratic Regulator (LQR)-based switching controller was specifically designed for this hybrid scheme
of compensation, maintaining stringent performance requirements on the tracking of filtering currents
and the draining of the harmonic ripple currents. Results obtained with Matlab/SimulinkÒ illustrate an
Keywords:
effective and sound system of compensation which also reduces the necessary KVA rating of the APF.
Parallel resonance
Harmonic distortion
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Shunt active power compensation
Active power filter
Shunt hybrid filter

Introduction dynamic response and its easy implementation [5,11–13], whereas

With the continuous increase in the incorporation of nonlinear
loads in the power network, the harmonic distortion of voltage and
current waveforms, among other power quality problems, has
become a great concern. This paper focuses on the use of shunt fil-
tering techniques such as shunt Active Power Filter (APF) and
shunt hybrid filter (SHF), to mitigate harmonic distortion and to
compensate reactive power. In particular, the shunt APF has been
demonstrated to be an appropriated tool for the mitigation of har-
monic currents and reactive power compensation [1–10].
The shunt APF can be modeled as a controlled current source
that supplies a compensation current in parallel with the nonlinear
load. The main components of a shunt APF are: a reference current
generator, a switching current controller based on a pulse-width
modulation (PWM) technique, a power electronic converter (usu-
ally a voltage-source-type PWM inverter), and a dc voltage con-
troller (PI controller). These components make possible the
injection of the desired filtering currents into the electric system.
Usually, the modulation technique used when modeling the shunt
APF is the hysteresis-band current controller, due to its fast
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hramos@tracsa.com.mx (H.A. Ramos-Carranza), amedinr@
gmail.com (A. Medina-Ríos), j2ramirez@gmail.com (J. Segundo), manuelmadrigalmtz@
hotmail.com (M. Madrigal).
this switching technique maintains a variable modulation fre-
quency [11,12]. A relevant characteristic, due to the nonlinear nat-
ure of the inverter and the PWM modulation techniques, is that the
current injected by the APF into the electric network includes an
undesired ripple current, i.e., a high frequency current with rela-
tively low amplitude. For the case of the hysteresis band current
controller, there is a presence of variable high frequency modula-
tion harmonics [11,12]. In some cases this ripple current could lead
to some undesirable effects in the electric system, such as har-
monic ripple contamination to the load voltages, due to the feeder
impedance voltage drop at the point of common coupling (PCC),
and/or even more, eventually, this ripple current could trigger pos-
sible resonances, being parallel resonances of particular considera-
tion due to their severity. These phenomena are described with
detail in Section ‘Shunt filtering performance in non-stiff systems’.
It is known that a path should be provided to drain this high fre-
quency ripple current; this goal could be achieved with a LC
ripple-filter [14] or a compensator-passive filter structure designed
for this particular purpose [15]. The necessity of adequate develop-
ment an application of techniques to solve potential problems of
resonance and harmonic distortion in diverse electrical networks
has been stressed in more recent contributions [16–18]. In [16]
application of techniques for harmonic mitigation in networks
with integration of wind power plants are analyzed through simu-
lation for certain types of wind turbines; considering resonance

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2015.08.008
0142-0615/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161
and non-resonance operation conditions. Details of the techniques
applied are however not given. In [17] frequency scan and modal
analysis methods are applied for harmonic distortion and system
resonances identification in wave power plant applications, so that
appropriate correction measures can be timely undertaken. A dis-
tributed series/hybrid-shunt compensation technique is proposed
in [18] for harmonic mitigation in industrial/commercial facilities.
The main aim of this paper is to provide a strong and high qual-
ity scheme of compensation, e.g., shunt filtering, when applied to
non-stiff systems. The proposed control is good enough to provide
the following goals: (1) To provide a sound solution to the parallel
resonance problem that can be present in shunt APF compensation,
(2) To allow the correct shunt filtering compensation, (3) To avoid
the propagation of the harmonic ripple current into the electric
network, (4) To reduce, as much as possible, the KVA rating of
the APF.
During the development of the proposed control methodology
it is necessary to transform the shunt APF scheme of compensation
into a SHF compensation scheme; this is achieved by incorporating
a shunt capacitor bank. Due to the inclusion of the shunt capacitor
bank, which compensates the reactive power, the proposed solu-
tion has the advantage of significantly reducing the KVA rating of
the shunt APF converter. Under this new SHF configuration; the
shunt APF (active element) performs harmonic current mitigation,
and the shunt capacitor (passive element) is placed to compensate
reactive power and to provide the path for draining out the har-
monic ripple current. In order to properly achieve these goals with
the SHF; a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) switching current con-
troller, based on that proposed in [15], is specifically designed for
this SHF configuration.
This contribution is organized as follows: in Section ‘Shunt fil-
tering performance in non-stiff systems’ the performance of the
shunt filtering techniques, shunt APF and shunt SHF, are tested
in a non-stiff three-phase four-wire electric system and the
obtained results are observed and analyzed. The electric system
for the test is the same used throughout the paper. Section ‘Shunt
hybrid filter control’ details the development of the control design
for the proposed SHF compensation scheme; simulation results
obtained with Matlab/SimulinkÒ are compared against those
obtained in Section ‘Shunt filtering performance in non-stiff sys-
tems’; the main conclusions drawn from this investigation are
given in Section ‘Conclusions’.
Shunt filtering performance in non-stiff systems
This section details how the performance of the shunt APF and
the SHF compensation schemes are widely and potentially
Fig. 1. Shunt active power filter compensation scheme in a 3F4W system.
153
affected, sometimes leading to miss functioning or even failure,
when these shunt filtering techniques are applied for compensa-
tion of non-stiff electric systems where the source impedance is
considered, in some literature also referred as weak systems.
Through Matlab/SimulinkÒ simulations the shunt APF and the
SHF compensation performance and their non-desirable associated
effects are observed and analyzed. First; the shunt APF compensa-
tion scheme is applied and the propagation of the harmonic ripple
current to the load voltages will be shown. Second; the SHF com-
pensation scheme is applied using the same test system, and the
associated parallel resonance phenomenon which can be poten-
tially present will be shown. In both cases it is important to notice
that the wrong compensation performance does not depend on the
reference current generator used by the shunt APF. In fact, these
problems will be triggered by the high frequency ripple current
inherent to the injected shunt APF currents.
Shunt active power filter – harmonic ripple contamination of load
voltages
The shunt APF scheme of compensation in a three-phase four-
wire electric system is illustrated in Fig. 1. In this system an unbal-
anced linear load in parallel with a nonlinear load are supplied by a
balanced voltage source.
The nonlinear load is a 9.41 KVA, 6-pulse diode rectifier and the
linear load is a series resistance–inductance branch per phase.
Table 1 gives the system parameters. The reference current gener-
ator to be used by the APF is implemented according with [5], and
is given by,
2ðPT þ P loss Þ
sinðxt þ /a1 Þ


ifa ðtÞ ¼ ila ðtÞ  ð1Þ
UT
2ðPT þ P loss Þ
sinðxt þ /a1  2p=3Þ


ifb ðtÞ ¼ ilb ðtÞ  ð2Þ
UT
2ðPT þ P loss Þ
sinðxt þ /a1 þ 2p=3Þ


ifc ðtÞ ¼ ilc ðtÞ  ð3Þ
UT


where ifk ðtÞ is the reference filtering current of phase k, ilk ðtÞ is the
line current of phase k, e.g. in this example it corresponds to the
load current drawn by the combination of the linear unbalanced
load current and the rectifier load current; the subscript k repre-
sents the phases a, b or c, respectively. P T is the total active power
delivered to the load, U T is the sum of the peak value of the source
voltages uk , /a1 is the phase angle of the fundamental component of
the load voltage at phase a, and x is the angular speed at funda-
mental frequency f of 60 Hz.
154 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161

Table 1
Circuit parameters.

uk Supply phase voltage 176.7 V rms

Ls Source inductance 0.1 mH
Rs Source resistance 0.0015 X
Lf Energy link inductance 2 mH
Rf Energy link resistance 0.1 X
RL Rectifier load resistance 100 X
Ra Load resistance at phase a 15.4 X
Rb Load resistance at phase b 15.4 X
Rc Load resistance at phase c 7X
La Load inductance at phase a 11.5 mH
Lb Load inductance at phase b 15.4 mH
Lc Load inductance at phase c 23.5 mH Fig. 3. Power flow with shunt APF compensation.
C1 ; C2 DC side converter capacitors 500 lF
U dc DC voltage converter 1000 V

Source currents isk , before and after compensation, are shown in

Once the reference currents are generated they are supplied to a
Fig. 2(c). It can be noticed that those are balanced as soon as the
hysteresis-band current controller [5] to generate the control sig-
APF goes into operation. It is evident, by observing the currents
nals of the voltage source inverter (VSI) and to reproduce the actual
waveform of Fig. 2(c), the low order harmonic current cancelation
filtering current to be injected into the electric system by the APF.
by the APF. The total harmonic distortion THDis of the source cur-
The capacitors C 1 and C 2 are used for energy storage and even
rents, before the shunt APF compensation is on average 8.8%
though the capacitors instantaneous voltage slightly fluctuates
(due to low order harmonics); and after the compensation the
due to harmonics, a constant dc voltage U dc at the inverter termi-
value of THDis has been reduced to 6.5% (due to high order harmon-
nals must be kept. Since the losses produced by switching and
ics) just below the recommended limit, even though the reference
capacitor voltage variations must be supplied by the source, a
current generator is calculating the reference filtering currents to
power loss signal P loss (controlled via a PI controller) is added to
achieve 0% of harmonic distortion [5], i.e. the shunt APF is injecting
PT in (1)–(3).
all the low order harmonics in order to be able to mitigate the total
The system of Fig. 1 was implemented in Matlab/SimulinkÒ and
distortion of the source currents. The resulting THDis after the
the results obtained from the simulation are illustrated in Fig. 2.
shunt APF compensation is only due the ripple current. For obser-
The load voltages uk are shown in Fig. 2(a); it can be noticed that
vation purposes, the shunt APF filtering current injected at phase c
the voltages are harmonic ripple contaminated as soon as the
is illustrated in Fig. 2(d). Please observe the ripple current inherent
APF goes into operation at one cycle of simulation; the total har-
to the filtering current.
monic distortion THDu of the load voltages after the shunt APF
On the other hand, Fig. 3 shows the power flows during the
compensation is on average 10%, beyond the recommended limit
shunt APF compensation. When the APF is placed to perform reac-
in [19]. In addition, this harmonic contamination of the load volt-
tive power compensation, in addition to the well identified har-
ages will cause current distortion in any other load that may be
monic mitigation, the shunt APF has the capability to inject a
connected at its terminal bus, as it can be observed from Fig. 2
controlled three-phase reactive current component at fundamental
(b). Currents ilk , are distorted/unbalanced (low order harmonics
frequency in order to deliver the reactive power required by the
due to the current drawn from the load) and harmonic ripple con-
load. And as observed from Fig. 2(a) and (c), during compensation,
taminated (high order harmonics due to the harmonic ripple prop-
the source currents are placed in phase with the load voltages at
agation to the voltages supplying the load), see Figs. 1 and 2
fundamental frequency. This injection of reactive current compo-
(a) and (b).

Fig. 2. Results of the shunt APF compensation. (a) Load voltages, (b) load currents, (c) source currents and (d) shunt APF current at phase c.
 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161
nent at fundamental frequency is usually the mayor contribution
to the total rms filtering current. Therefore, the reactive current
injection is the mayor contribution to the necessary KVA rating
of the shunt APF when it is placed to compensate both; harmonic
currents and reactive power.
The three-phase rms filtering current was observed to be
14.49 A giving a rating of 4.43 KVA, which for practical applications
can be an expensive solution, mainly due to the KVA size of the
converter used in the shunt APF structure. Then, it is obvious that
if we decide to compensate reactive power in a conventional way
with a passive element, e.g., placing a shunt capacitor bank, it
may turn out to be useful for the reduction of the necessary APF
KVA rating. Thus, the compensation scheme is a SHF, where the
shunt APF would be aimed to mitigate the harmonic currents,
and the shunt capacitor bank would be aimed for the compensa-
tion of reactive power.
Shunt hybrid filter – parallel resonance phenomenon
A major drawback of active power filters is their high rating, e.g.
up to 80% of the nonlinear load in some practical applications [20].
The problems emerge when the APF becomes a costly solution for
harmonic current mitigation and reactive power compensation.
Due to economic concerns and problems associated with insula-
tion, as well as series or parallel connection of switches [20],
Fig. 4. Shunt hybrid filter compensation circuit.
Fig. 5. Parallel resonance phenomenon. (a) Load voltages, (b) source currents.
155
different structures of hybrid filter have evolved as a cost-
effective solution for the compensation of nonlinear loads [20–
25]. The hybrid filter topology presented in this paper consists of
a shunt APF, and a shunt capacitor bank acting as a reactive power
compensator, see Fig. 4. For this compensation scheme, the shunt
APF placed to perform harmonic cancelation and reactive power
compensation is not included in its compensation mechanism. This
assumption does not imply any changes in the control algorithm of
the shunt APF or the current generator reference. This is because
the shunt APF sees the capacitor bank as an added load component,
i.e. another load, when sensing the load currents ilk just before the
shunt capacitor bank is placed. It is easy to see this analogy from
Figs. 1 and 4 for the shunt APF compensation scheme and the
SHF compensation scheme, respectively. Therefore, as a result of
this basic assumption, there is no need for a modification on the
current generator reference in Eqs. (1)–(3), and the shunt APF is
directly implemented as in the previous subsection. Then, contin-
uing with the compensation process, the capacitor bank shown
in Fig. 4, is placed to supply the three-phase reactive power
Q 3/ ¼ 3:479 KVAr, which is the reactive power demanded by the
load, see Fig. 3.
The capacitor reactance and capacitance are calculated as [25],
V 2LL
X Cf ¼ ð4Þ
Q 3/
1
Cf ¼ ð5Þ
xX C f
where X C f is the capacitive reactance, V LL is the line-to-line rms vol-
tage, and C f is the capacitance per phase. To achieve reactive power
compensation, the capacitance per phase of the capacitor bank was
found to be C f ¼ 99:30 lF.
The test system of Fig. 4 was implemented in Matlab/SimulinkÒ
and the simulation results are shown in Fig. 5. Fig. 5(a) illustrates
the load voltages; once the shunt APF is switched on after one per-
iod. Discordant waveforms appear, and this behavior may be
caused by a resonance condition produced by the harmonic inter-
action of the APF, the capacitor bank and the load. Consequently,
the same situation is presented in the source current waveforms
of Fig. 5(b).
156 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161
To identify the possible resonance problem, an analysis using
the equivalent circuit of the electric system for phase a, as shown
in Fig. 6, is performed. The linear load impedance is also included
in the analysis.
The source impedance and load data are the same given in
Table 1. The equivalent impedance of the circuit at any harmonic
order h is given by,
1 applications [14], has to be included as an important part of the
Za ¼


ð1=ðRs þ jhxLs ÞÞ þ ð1=ðRa þ jhxLa ÞÞ þ 1= j hx1C
f relies on avoiding miss functioning or even failure during compen-
The response of the equivalent impedance Z a at different har-
monic frequencies is illustrated in Fig. 7(a); similar results were
obtained for phases b and c. It can be observed that there is a strong
parallel resonant frequency taking place at the 27th harmonic, i.e.
at 1, 620 Hz.
This resonance peak occurs mainly by the addition of the capac-
itor bank, and it is excited by the ripple current inherent to the APF
currents. Consistent information with the above observation is
obtained from the harmonic spectrum of the load voltage for phase
a illustrated in Fig. 7(b). It can be observed that the harmonic mag-
nitudes for any frequency component increase as they approach
the parallel resonance shown in Fig. 7(a).
The unexpected and/or undesirable results, observed in Figs. 2
and 5, due to the parallel resonance phenomenon, and previously
due to the harmonic ripple contamination of the load voltages,
make necessary to extent the analysis and/or the control design
for these compensation schemes. Please notice that both outcomes,
the harmonic ripple contamination originated from the shunt APF
to the load voltages and later to the load currents, as well as the
parallel resonance, are triggered by the high frequency harmonic
ripple current inherent to the injection currents, see Fig. 2(d),
and these problems can be present no matter what current gener-
Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit for parallel resonance analysis.
Fig. 7. Parallel resonance at phase a. (a) Driving point impedance, (b) harmonic content of load voltage.
ator reference is used for the calculation of the reference filtering
currents.
Even though there are many approaches for the calculation fil-
tering currents reference in the literature, usually, for theoretical
purposes, they are presented without including a high-pass filter
or any other control structure for draining out the harmonic ripple
current.
So far, in this section it has been stated that the path for drain-
ing the high frequency ripple current, as required for practical
ð6Þ control strategy and in the compensation structure. The motivation
sation as observed above. In the section to follow, a Linear Quadra-
tic Regulator (LQR)-based switching controller is designed to
generate the inverter control signals. The main purpose is to
restrict the ripple current propagation into the electric system to
a given path, i.e. a path for draining the ripple current in a planned
manner, thus allowing the correct performance of the hybrid filter-
ing process.
Shunt hybrid filter control
Solving the resonance problems and the harmonic ripple
contamination to the load voltages
The LQR method [26] is a powerful technique for designing con-
trollers for complex systems that have stringent performance
requirements. The LQR method seeks to find the optimal controller
that minimizes a given cost function. This cost function is param-
eterized by two matrices, Q and R, that weight the state vector
and the system input, respectively. In the next section, a LQR-
switching controller is designed to be able to generate the control
signals of the voltage source inverter of the shunt APF under the
SHF compensation scheme. This LQR-switching controller is
designed to put strong performance requirements on the harmonic
ripple current, allowing the SHF compensation process to work
successfully.
LQR-switching controller
For the designed LQR-based switching controller the optimum
control of the system is based on minimizing the performance
index of the form [12],
 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161 157

Z 1
Then, the state equation (12) can be transformed into a new
J¼ fðw  wref ÞT Qðw  wref Þ þ uT Rugdt ð7Þ
0 state equation as
where w is the state vector and wref is a desired reference state vec-
tor, Q is a Hermitian matrix or a symmetric positive semi-definite
matrix, R is a symmetric positive definite matrix. For this particular _ ¼ VAV 1 w þ VB1 us þ VB2 m ¼ Kw þ  1 us þ  2 m
w ð14Þ
case, R is scalar and sets a penalty on the maximum control action, Matrices K,  1 and  2 can be obtained by,
m is the optimal control law and T is the transpose operator. The
minimization of the cost function results in a feedback control of
the form 2 3
R 2U 3
 Lf 0  L1 0 2 3
6 7
dc
f f 0
m ¼ Kðw  wref Þ ð8Þ 6 R Rf
6 s R 7
7 617
6 Lf 7
6 Udc 7
6L Lf
 RLss  L1s  L1  L1eq  RLss þ L f 7 6 Ls 7 6 7
K¼6 s f f
7;  1 ¼ 6 7;  2 ¼ 6 Lf 7
where the gain matrix K is obtained by the solution of the steady- 6 0 1
0 0 7 405 6 7
6 Cf 7 4 0 5
state Riccati equation [7]. Once a suitable gain matrix K is selected, 4 5 0
0 0 1 R
 Leqeq 0
the switching control is obtained from [12,15]: Leq

ð15Þ
m ¼ hysðKðw  wref ÞÞ ð9Þ
For the control law represented by (8), it is assumed that we
where the hys function is defined by
have full control over m and the switching control is based on a lin-
if Kðw  wref Þ > Di =2 then hysðKðw  wref ÞÞ ¼ 1 ear combination of multiple states [15]. For most realistic applica-
ð10Þ tions, the LQR problem is solved via a computational package, such
else if Kðw  wref Þ < Di =2 then hysðKðw  wref ÞÞ ¼ 1
as MatlabÒ. The MatlabÒ command lqrðK;  ; Q ; RÞ, with
This technique is called switching band tracking control in [12],  ¼  1 þ  2 , solves the LQR problem and the associated Riccati
and the selection of Di determines the switching frequency while equation. This command calculates the matrix of optimum feed-
tracking the reference. back control K, so that the control feedback law (8) minimizes
The equivalent circuit of the hybrid filter compensation scheme the performance index (7) subject to (14).
is shown in Fig. 8, where the combination of both linear and non- Fig. 9 illustrates the control diagram of the shunt active power
linear loads is represented by a series RL equivalent load. The state filter. It can be observed how the reference current generator and
vector x and the state-space equation are obtained from the anal- the LQR-based switching current controller are incorporated
ysis of Fig. 8 as, together to complete the proposed control strategy for the SHF
T compensation scheme. The low complexity in the implementation
x ¼ ½ i1 i2 i3 uc  ð11Þ
of the LQR switching current control, to generate the switching
2 3 commands of the inverter, is similar to the hysteresis band current
 RLss 0 0  L1s 213 2 3
6 7 0 controller [12], which is widely used in shunt active power filter
Ls
6 0 R
 Lf 0  L1 7 607 6 V dc 7 applications [1–5], see Fig. 9.
6 7 6 Lf 7
x_ ¼ 6
f f
7x þ 6 7
6 7us þ 6 7 ð12Þ
6 R 1 7 4 5 6 7m Fig. 10 shows the flow chart of the LQR calculations to obtain
6 0 0  Leqeq Leq 7
0 4 05 the feedback gain matrix K. Given a set of weighting matrices, Q
4 5
1 1
 C1 0 0 0 and R, the process in the calculation of matrix K becomes simple.
Cf Cf f
However, the challenge lies, precisely, on how the weighting
For convenience, the estate vector x can be transformed into a matrices Q and R are chosen. Most of the times, the weighting
new state vector w, which is expressed in terms of the local vari- matrix Q reflects the importance of the states to be controlled
ables of compensation and/or the control variables, e.g., the filter- and the selection of an appropriate value of R has to be chosen to
ing current if , the current trough the capacitor ic , the terminal provide the control effort of the system and to obtain a finite time
voltage of the capacitor uc and the load current il . From Fig. 8 the convergence of the regulator [12]. An alternative for the tuning
relationship between the state vector x in (11) and the new state decision of the weighting matrices is to analyze the step response
vector w is observed. The state transformation is finally made by of the system in order to jump-start the learning curve necessary
using the transformation matrix V as shown in (13), to select Q and R and be able to apply the LQR design method to
2 332 2 3 a practical problem. Once the LQR algorithm is solved, and the
0 1 0 0
if i1
6 i 7 6 1 1 1 0 76 i 7 feedback matrices are obtained, the implementation would pro-
6 c7 6 76 2 7 ceed with no further calculations of the LQR algorithm, unless
w¼6 7¼6 76 7 ¼ Vx ð13Þ
4 uc 5 4 0 0 0 1 54 i3 5 the circuit and/or load conditions are changed.
il 0 0 1 0 uc On the computation of the sate vector of references wref ; the ref-
erence filtering current is computed using the reference current
generator as given in Eqs. (1)–(3). The references for the terminal
capacitor voltage and the current through the capacitor are formed
from the determination of the positive sequence component of the
source voltages, as presented in [15]. Despite the consistency of the
state references, as an important part of the proof of control con-
vergence given in [12], the unconsidered disturbances such as
lighting strikes, faults, or large load changes might saturate the
control leading to imperfect tracking [12], therefore, those condi-
tions and perturbations are left out of the experimental simula-
tions. In addition, in order to avoid the complexity of forming a
reference for the load current, the gain matrix K is reduced to
K ¼ ½ K 1 K 2 K 3 0 . It is necessary to verify that this reduction
of the state feedback results in shifting the closed-loop eigenvalues
Fig. 8. Equivalent circuit of the shunt hybrid filter. to the left of s, in order to maintain the system stable [15,26].
158 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161

Fig. 9. Control diagram of the shunt APF under the SHF compensation scheme.

Fig. 10. Flow chart of the calculation of the LQR feedback gain matrix.

Simulation results
The test system used is that of Fig. 4. For this case, the LQR-
based switching current controller, developed in the previous sec-
tion for the shunt APF, is used. For instance, the weighting matrix
to minimize the performance index of the LQR problem is selected
as Q ¼ diagð½ 25 10 3 0 Þ, where diag stands for diagonal
matrix, and R ¼ 0:01. Although the LQR switching band current
controller is claimed to be robust [15], and sometimes, only the
calculation of the feedback matrix of a single-phase is performed
and the results used for the other two phases [12,15], for this case
study, we have decided to calculate the reduced feedback gain
matrices for each phase a, b, c, according the flow chart of
Fig. 10. The resulting feedback matrices for each phase are given as,
K a ¼ ½ 49:9468 9:3787 34:5637 
K b ¼ ½ 49:9460 9:3795 34:7046  ð16Þ
K c ¼ ½ 49:9450 9:3805 34:7665 
The switching commands are then to be generated according to
Eqs. (9) and (10) and the control implementation for the shunt APF
is to be implemented as illustrated in Fig. 9.
The results obtained from the simulation with Matlab/
SimulinkÒ are shown in Fig. 11. It can be observed that now, both,
 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161
the load voltages shown in Fig. 11(a), and the source currents
shown in Fig. 11(b), become balanced and free of harmonics once
the shunt APF goes into operation at one cycle of simulation. The
THD index for load voltages and source currents is null. In addition,
the source currents are placed in phase with the load voltages, thus
compensating the reactive power and achieving a unity load power
factor. In similar way, please observe from Fig. 11(a) –(c), that
there is not harmonic ripple contamination into the electric net-
work. The high-frequency ripple current has been drained-out
directly through the capacitor branch avoiding its propagation into
the electric network. Most importantly, the parallel-resonance
problem, shown in Fig. 5, has been eliminated. This goal has been
achieved despite that the frequency response of the electric system
is the same as for the previous simulation experiment results of
Fig. 5. The proposed solution will work, no matter the frequency
response of the system under study, or in other words, it ensures
that the parallel romance problem will not be excited by the har-
monic ripple current. In this sense, the harmonic ripple propaga-
tion and the parallel resonance problem, associated and triggered
by the harmonic ripple current, have been conveniently sup-
pressed as in function of the control signals of the power electronic
converter.
The shunt APF current injected at phase c is illustrated in Fig. 11
(d). From this illustration, it can be easily noticed that there has
been a reduction in the amount of the necessary total rms current
injection. As a comparison exercise please observe the current
injection in phase c of Fig. 11 (d) and compare it to the current
injection shown in Fig. 2(d), which is the current injected when
the compensation of reactive power was planned to be achieved
Fig. 11. Results of the shunt hybrid filter compensation. (a) Load voltages, (b) source currents,(c) load currents and (d) shunt APF injection current at phase c.
Fig. 12. Power flow during the shunt hybrid filter compensation.
159
by the shunt APF. It can be also noticed that the ripple current is
now smaller in amplitude.
For this case, the three-phase rms filtering current was 8.54 A,
giving a KVA rating of the APF of 2.6 KVA. It becomes clear that
the reactive power compensation using the capacitor bank has
reduced the necessary KVA rating of the APF. The reduction was
approximately 1.8 KVA, from 4.4 KVA to 2.6 KVA, which represents
a remarkable 41% size reduction of the power electronic converter
needed for the shunt APF. It is as well important to remark that for
each particular case, the reduction of the necessary KVA rating in
the shunt APF converter will depend on the amount of reactive
power compensation to be achieved with the capacitor bank dur-
ing the process of transforming the shunt APF compensation
scheme into the SHF compensation scheme.
The power flows during the shunt hybrid filter compensation
are shown in Fig. 12. Now the capacitor bank is supplying the reac-
tive power consumed by the load. As a consequence of a better
tracking control over the filtering currents, see Fig. 11(d), the losses
have been significantly reduced. The power losses in the shunt APF
were reduced by 62%, i.e. from 184 W to 70 W.
Fig. 13(a) shows the dc voltage across the inverter input capac-
itors U dc , where the dc capacitors are assumed to be pre-charged
and for observation purposes the instantaneous switching power
loss signal Ploss is shown in Fig. 13(b).
Under this SHF compensation scheme, the sinusoidal load volt-
ages observed in Fig. 11(a) are the terminal voltages across the
capacitor, i.e. the voltages at the point of common coupling. There-
fore, a good quality on the load voltages supplying the nonlinear
load is ensured, see Fig. 11(a), maintaining the terminal voltages
160 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161

Fig. 13. Electric conditions during compensation, (a) dc voltage V dc at the converter terminals, and power loss P loss observed in the shunt APF.

Fig. 14. Capacitor current during shunt hybrid filter compensation.

of the capacitor free of low and high order harmonics. Finally, to
complete the analysis of results, the currents through the capacitor
are shown in Fig. 14, where it can be observed that the high-
frequency ripple current has been drained-out thorough the capac-
itor as it was expected and specified in the control design. The total
harmonic distortion of the capacitor current was found to be
THDic ¼ 3:1%, barely increasing the rms current, due to the har-
monic ripple current. The ripple current drained through the
capacitor contains high frequency harmonics with relatively low
amplitude, so that, similar results on the increment of the rms cur-
rent through the capacitor will be expected for any other particular
case of study, regardless the current generator reference used for
the shunt APF. Therefore, since the capacitor terminal voltage
(i.e. the load voltages) and the current through the capacitor were
included in the state vector control w, the rms voltage and rms
current restrictions and recommendations for the shunt power
capacitor are planned to always meet those imposed by IEEE-18
[27]. As the reactive power compensation is planned to be achieved
by the shunt capacitor, which causes the amplitude of the current
trough the capacitor at fundamental component to be relatively
high, the limits imposed by IEEE-18 will always meet, no matter
the circuit parameters of the case of study and the selected current
calculator reference for the shunt APF.
Conclusions
An integrated control for a shunt hybrid filter compensation
scheme has been proposed. This integrated control is based on
the design of a LQR-based current controller, for a shunt hybrid fil-
ter, which has been specifically designed and proposed in this con-
tribution for this SHF scheme of compensation in particular. At the
end of the process, the structure of the SHF is composed by a shunt
Active Power Filter and a shunt capacitor bank.
Obtained results have shown a remarkable performance on the
elimination of harmonic distortion (null THD index achieved by the
shunt APF) and the compensation of reactive power achieved with
a conventional shunt capacitor bank, is also companied by using
the shunt capacitor bank as a high-pass ripple filter.
The proposed control configuration puts stringent performance
requirements over the harmonic ripple current inherent to the
shunt filtering current. Therefore, the harmonic ripple current
propagation into the electric system has been restricted to a given
path, e.g., to be drained out through the shunt capacitor. This con-
trol action has a very important signification because it provides a
sound solution to the potential presence of parallel-resonance
associated to the shunt active filtering process, as well as it avoids
 H.A. Ramos-Carranza et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 75 (2016) 152–161
the harmonic ripple propagation into the electric network, e.g., to
the load voltages at the point of common coupling.
It has been demonstrated that the proposed control provides a
cost-effective solution for shunt active power filtering since trans-
forming the shunt APF into a shunt hybrid filter topology reduces
the overall size and cost of the shunt APF due to the size reduction
on the KVA rating needed by the electronic power converter of the
shunt APF. This situation should not be ignored when planning
future physical implementations of the compensation device.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Universidad Michoa-
cana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo through the División de Estudios
de Posgrado, Facultad de Ingeniería Eléctrica (DEP-FIE), Morelia,
México, for the facilities granted to carry out this investigation.
Second author wishes to thank the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnología of México (CONACYT) for financial support to this
investigation.
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