1st Power Electronic & Drive Systems & Technologies Conference

Model-based direct control of PWM converters with an LCL filter

M. Monfared*, Student member, IEEE, F. Adabi*, H. Rastegar*, H. Madadi Kojabadi**
* Dept. of Electrical Eng., Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. ** Dept. of Electrical Eng., Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran. Emails: m.monfared@ieee.org, farid_adabi@aut.ac.ir, rastegar@aut.ac.ir, madadi@sut.ac.ir

Abstract
This paper presents a novel model-based strategy for direct power control of three-phase pulsewidth-modulated converters. In another paper, the authors have reported this model-based method for direct power control of three-phase PWM converters which are connected to the grid through an L filter. In this research work by an analogous approach the proposed DPC is adapted for three-phase converters with an output LCL filter. The performance of the proposed technique is verified with simulation results. Keywords: Direct power control, LCL filter

However, among the well-known disadvantages of the DPC scheme are: variable switching frequency (difficulties of converter and filter design) and some problems due to the high gain of the hysteresis controllers [2]-[6]. However the conventional switching table based DPC is popular and extensively employed, but only simple AC inductors are used as the filter between the converter and the grid. To achieve an acceptable harmonics performance a high value for the AC inductance should be selected; however this makes it expensive and bulky and leads to poor dynamic. On the contrary, the third-order LCL filter offers reduced level of harmonics distortion at lower switching frequencies which is a significant advantage in high power applications with smaller total inductance values [7]-[9]. On the other hand, the LCL filter may cause the steady-state and transient distortion of the mains current due to resonances and bring control system stability problems. This problem can be reduced but not solved in VOC controlled PWM converters if the main resonance frequency is selected in a frequency range where no harmonics of the output current exist [7]-[9]. Unfortunately, this approach does not work for DPC case where the switching harmonic spectrum is broad and not clearly defined due to the variable switching frequency. Another solution for the VOC case is active damping methods which have already received a lot of attentions [10], [11] override the modulation index. These techniques are not possible with DPC; since switching states are selected by a switching table and not through a current control PWM loop. In this research work a novel model-based strategy for direct power control of three-phase pulse-widthmodulated converters is presented. In this method, hysteresis comparators and switching table are replaced by a fixed switching frequency PWM voltage modulator. The required converter voltage in each sampling period is directly calculated based on only reference and measured values of active and reactive powers, system parameters, and the measured

I. Introduction
Research interest in grid connected three-phase PWM converters has grown rapidly over the past few years due to some of their important advantages, such as power regeneration capabilities, control of DC link voltage, low harmonic distortion of mains currents, bidirectional control of active and reactive powers, small DC link capacitor, and high power factor. Various control strategies have been proposed in recent works on this type of rectifiers. Voltage oriented control (VOC) is widely employed which provides a good dynamic and steady-state response by its internal current control loops. One main drawback of such a system is that the performance is highly dependent on the applied current control strategy and the connected AC network conditions [1]. A new control strategy called direct power control (DPC) which is based on the instantaneous active and reactive power control has become more widely used over the last few years due to the advantages of fast dynamic performance and simple control implementation. In DPC, there are no internal current control loops and no PWM modulator block, because the converter switching states are appropriately selected by a switching table based on the instantaneous errors between the commanded and measured values of the active and reactive powers.

978-1-4244-5971-1/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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voltage of the AC source. Then, the PWM generator synthesizes the reference voltage and generates the switching pulses for the voltage source converter. The authors have already reported this model-based control strategy for direct power control of threephase PWM converters which are connected by an AC inductance filter to the mains which shows superior performance than the VOC and the conventional DPC techniques [12]. In this research work, by an analogous approach, the proposed DPC is adapted for three-phase converters with an output LCL filter.

If one chose as the angular speed of the AC source voltage, the equations (1)-(3) in the dq frame become:
d 1 i 1d i 1q = [ R1i 1d + v sd v Cd ] dt L1 d 1 i 1q + i 1d = R1i 1q + v sq v Cq dt L1

(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

II. Proposed DPC for LCL filter based converter

The block diagram of the proposed DPC system with an LCL filter is depicted in Fig. 1. To develop the control method, the equivalent circuit of the gridconnected converter through an LCL filter is emphasized in Fig. 2.
C Grid

d 1 v Cd v Cq = [i 1d i 2d ] dt C d 1 v Cq + v Cd = i 1q i 2q dt C d 1 i 2d i 2q = [ R 2 i 2d + v Cd v d ] dt L2
d 1 R 2 i 2q + v Cq v q i 2q + i 2d = dt L2

These equations show how the d and q components of the currents and the capacitor voltage are dependent by the cross-coupling terms. Assuming a small sampling period (Tsp), equations (4)-(9) can be written in discrete form:
i 1d (k + 1) = T sp L1

SVM

Switching Pulses

3 v PWM Converter

L2

L1 Rf Cf iabc

vs

[ R1i 1d (k ) + v sd (k ) v Cd (k )]
(10)

+ T sp i 1q (k ) + i 1d (k )

Pref Qref

Eqs. (26) and (27)

P Q

Power calculation

i 1q (k + 1) =

T sp

R1i 1q (k ) + v sq (k ) v Cq (k ) L1

dq abc

PLL

v s v s

T sp i 1d (k ) + i 1q (k )
2 3

(11)

vsabc

v cd (k + 1) =

[i 1d (k ) i 2d (k )] C + T sp v Cq (k ) + v Cd (k )
i 1q (k ) i 2q (k ) C T sp v Cd (k ) + v Cq (k ) T sp L2 T sp T sp

T sp

(12)

Fig. 1 Three-phase LCL filter based PWM converter.

v cq (k + 1) =

i2

L2

R2

vC
Rf

L1

R1

i1
i 2d (k + 1) =

(13)

[ R 2i 2d (k ) + v Cd (k ) v d (k )]
(14)

Cf

vs

+ T sp i 2q (k ) + i 2d (k ) i 2q (k + 1) = R 2 i 2q (k ) + v Cq (k ) v q (k ) L2

Fig. 2 Equivalent circuit of PWM converter with LCL filter.

Neglecting the small volt-drop on Rf, this configuration can be modeled by the following differential equations in the stationary reference frame:
d 1 i 1abc = R1 i 1abc + v sabc v Cabc dt L1 d 1 v Cabc = i 1abc i 2abc dt C d 1 R 2 i 2abc + v Cabc v abc i 2abc = dt L
2

T sp i 2d (k ) + i 2q (k )

(15)

The active and reactive powers in the rotating reference frame are:
P (k + 1) = v sd (k + 1)i 1d (k + 1) + v sq ( k + 1)i 1q (k + 1) (16)

(1)

Q (k + 1) = v sq (k + 1)i 1d (k + 1) v sd (k + 1)i 1q (k + 1) (17) We will assume that R1 = R2 = 0, L1 = L and L2 = aL. Also the source voltage can be assumed constant during a small sampling period and thanks to the PLL, the control system will be synchronized with the AC source voltage (vsd(k+1) = vsd(k), vsq(k+1) = vsq(k) = 0).

(2) (3)

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Also, the target of the control is to make the load active and reactive powers at the sampling point (k+1), equal to the reference active and reactive power values currently available at the sampling point (k). So, using these assumptions and replacing equations (10) and (11) in (16) and (17) we will obtain:
Pref (k ) = P (k + 1) =
2 v sd (k ) v sd (k )v Cd (k ) L (18) + P (k ) T sp Q (k )

T sp

Q ref (k ) = Q (k + 1) =

v sd ( k )v Cq ( k ) L + Q (k ) + T sp P (k )

T sp

(19)

We can assume that the filter is well designed and works perfectly, therefore the changes in the i2 and vC during a small sampling period can be neglected (vCd(k+1) = vCd(k), vCq(k+1) = vCq(k), i2d(k+1) = i2d(k), i2q(k+1) = i2q(k)). Applying these simplifying assumptions, the equations (12)-(15) become:
1 [i 1d (k ) i 2d (k )] C 1 i 1q (k ) i 2q (k ) v Cd (k ) = C v Cd (k ) = aL i 2q (k ) + v d (k ) v Cq (k ) = v Cq (k ) = aL i 2d (k ) + v q (k )

usually called switching table based DPC, the hysteresis controllers are eliminated, so the problems of their high gain have been avoided. For example, the control sensitivity to AC current ripples is minimized and consequently the switching and sampling frequencies can be smaller. Furthermore, in the proposed DPC, the gate signals are generated by a PWM modulator instead of the hysteresis regulators, so the switching frequency is constant and much lower than the classical DPC case, and also advanced modulation techniques can be used to achieve higher efficiencies and better harmonics performance. Last but not least, the proposed DPC control strategy is developed for three-phase converters with an output LCL filter. A high order LCL filter compared to a simple L filter allows reduced level of harmonics distortion at lower switching frequencies with smaller total inductance value.

III. Performance evaluation

In order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system, simulations have been done in MATLAB/SIMULINK.

(20) (21) (22) (23)

One can solve the equations (20)-(23) for capacitor voltage and replace the results in equations (18) and (19) and rearrange them for vd and vq:
v d (k ) = L (1 aLC 2 ) Pref (k ) + P (k ) T sp Q (k ) T spv sd (k )
L (1 aLC 2 )v sd (k ) aL Q (k ) T sp v sd (k )

+ v q (k ) =

(26)

L (1 aLC 2 ) Q ref (k ) Q (k ) T sp P (k ) T spv sd (k ) aL P (k ) v sd (k )

(27)

The above equations are the vd and vq components in the rotating dq reference frame that satisfy the control condition of Pref (k) = P (k+1), and Qref (k) = Q (k+1). Equations (26) and (27) show that the dq components of the converter voltage can be directly controlled according to only the reference and measured values of active and reactive powers, system parameters, and the measured voltage of the AC source. The gating signals of the PWM converter will then be produced according to these references. In the proposed strategy, the voltage modulator has the dominant dynamics and the controller can almost reach the maximum system dynamic response. Since in the proposed DPC, in spite of the classical one which is

Fig. 3 Simulation results for switching table based DPC (L = 2.5 mH) [2].

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The power tracking, current shaping and harmonics performance of the proposed DPC with LCL filter is compared to the conventional switching table based DPC [2] and the proposed DPC with the output L filter [12]. The system parameters are the same for all cases of study and the total value of the filters inductance is chosen to be 2.5 mH. The switching and sampling frequencies are 10 kHz. The LCL filter is designed according to a well-known step by step design procedure which minimizes the current ripple and the reactive power of the capacitor and at the same time provides adequate stability margin and passive damping [7]-[9]. The parameters of the filter found to be L1 = 0.9 mH, L2 = 1.6 mH, Cf = 60 F and Rf = 4. Simulation results for three systems under study are shown in Figs. 3-5. Fig. 3 clearly shows that the conventional DPC with these values of sampling frequency (10 kHz) and filters inductance (2.5 mH) cannot provide an acceptable performance. In fact, the switching table based DPC can guarantee the

performance only under high values of sampling frequency and filters inductance, which is not usually feasible in high power applications. Fig 5. for proposed DPC with LCL filter confirm the superiority of the proposed method in providing more precise current control with minimum distortion and less harmonic noises (THD) and at the same time, more accurate regulation and less distortion in the output active and reactive powers. The harmonic spectrums of the mains current are also shown in Figs. 3-5. One can recognize that the classical DPC in Fig. 3 has a broadband harmonic spectrum that spreads over a wide low frequency range. Because of these low frequency harmonics, the design of LCL filters will be practically impossible in order to avoid resonances. On the other hand, comparing the total harmonic distortion (THDi) values of Figs. 4 and 5 approves better harmonics performance with a third order LCL filter instead of a simple L filter while the total inductance values are equal for both filters.

Fig. 4 Simulation results for proposed DPC with L filter (L = 2.5 mH) [12].

Fig. 5 Simulation results for proposed DPC with LCL filter (L1+L2 = 2.5 mH).

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IV. Conclusions
A novel model-based strategy for direct power control of three-phase pulse-width-modulated converters which are connected to the grid through an LCL filter is proposed. Besides using an LCL filter instead of an L one and the simplicity, simulations show the better performance of the proposed method compared to the classical switching table based DPC.

References
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Electronics, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 1364-1373, Sep. 2006. [11] S. Y. Yang, X. Zhang, C. W. Zhang, and Z. Xie, Study on active damping methods for voltage source converter with LCL input filter, in Proc. 6th IEEE Int. Conf. Power Electronics and Motion Control, pp. 975-979, 2009. [12] M. Monfared, H. Rastegar, and H. M. Kojabadi, High performance DPC for PWM converters, in Proc. 6th Int. Conf. Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bursa, 2009.

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