ABSTRACT

Active power filters (APFs) provides an effective measure to eliminate the power line harmonic/reactive currents generated by nonlinear loads or by distributed energy sources that are connected to the grid. Active power filters are typically connected in parallel to the harmonic/reactive current sources and cancel the harmonic/reactive components in the line current so that the current flow into and from the grid is sinusoidal and in phase with the grid voltage. Since the APFs process only the harmonic/reactive power, their power-handling capability can be much higher than that of the cascade power-factor-correction methods. In this paper, the one-cycle control method is extended to control three-phase APFs. The proposed control approach employs one integrator with reset along with several logic and linear components to control a voltage-source converter to achieve three-phase unity power factor for the current to and from the power grid. No multipliers or sensors for the load current and the APF inductor current are required. Furthermore, there is no need to calculate the reference for controlling APF inductor current so that complicated digital computation is eliminated. The operation switching frequency is constant that is desirable for industrial applications. The proposed control approach features great simplicity, excellent harmonic/reactive current cancellation, and solid stability. It is a cost-effective solution for power quality control for electronic equipment, buildings, industrial facilities, ships, airplanes, distributed power generation stations, etc. All findings are supported by experimental results. Index TermsActive power filter (APF), one-cycle control, power-factor correction (PFC), power quality control.

INTRODUCTION
The utility ac mains suffer increased harmonic pollution due to the increased number of nonlinear loads and distributed power sources connected to the grid, such as diode rectifiers, thyristor converters, power inverters, and electronic appliances. These nonlinear loads/sources generate harmonic and reactive current, which leads to low power factor, low energy efficiency, low power capacity, and harmful disturbance to other appliances. Power-factor-correction (PFC) techniques, passive power filters, and active power filters (APFs) are viable solutions to eliminate the harmonics and improve the power factor. With the PFC approach, a PFC unit is usually in cascade in the energy pass, which processes all the power and corrects the current to unity power factor. Those kind of approaches are usually suitable for low-power (less than 5 kVA) applications. In contrast to PFC, APF is in parallel (shunt APF) or in series (series APF) with the nonlinear load as well as sources and provides only the harmonic and reactive power to cancel the one generated by the nonlinear loads or sources. In this case, only a small portion of the energy is processed, which may result in overall higher energy efficiency and higher power processing capability. This kind approach are applicable for low-power (less than 5 kVA) to high-power applications (around 100 kVA). A three-phase shunt APF is typically composed of a three-phase bridge converter and control circuitry. Most previously reported control approaches need to sense the load current and calculate its harmonics and reactive components in order to generate the reference for controlling the current of a bridge converter [1]. Those control methods require fast and real-time calculation; therefore, a high-speed digital microprocessor and high-performance A/D converters are necessary, which yields high cost, complexity, and low stability. Reference [2] introduced a promising solution based on one-cycle control [3] and mains current sensing for a single-phase APF. The control method eliminates the need of calculating the current reference as well as the use of multipliers and voltage sensors in the control loop. The control circuitry is simple and reliable. Based on one-cycle control, a three-phase pulsewidthmodulation (PWM) active power filter without sensing grid voltage as well as multipliers was introduced in which represents by far the simplest APF controller with high performance. In that circuit, all switches are triggered with switching frequency, therefore, the switching losses are relatively higher than that of the vector operated active power filters. In this paper, a three-phase APF with six-switch bridge voltage-source converter with vector operation [5], [6] is investigated. It is found that this voltage source converter can be decoupled into a parallelconnected dual-boost converter with two-quadrant operation. Three-phase unity power factor can be achieved by controlling the parallel-connected dual-boost converter using one-cycle control.

Fig. 1. Power stage of the three-phase APF with six-switch bridge voltage-source converter.

Fig. 2. Normalized three-phase grid voltage waveforms.

The new control approach has the following features. Three-phase unity-power-factor and low total harmonic distortion (THD) are achieved by one integrator with reset as well as several logic and linear components. It is simple and reliable. Only ac mains current and voltage zero-crossing points are sensed. No sensors for the load current and the APF inductor current are required. There is no need to calculate the reference for APF inductor current so that complicated digital computation is eliminated. No multipliers are required. Constant switching frequency, which is desirable for industrial applications, is achieved. For the three-phase bridge converter, only two switches are operated in high frequency, and switching losses are reduced compared to PWM-operated ones. The proposed controller can operate with asymmetric grid voltages as well as under unbalanced load conditions to produce sinusoidal line currents.

II. CONCEPT OF PARALLEL-CONNECTED DUAL-BOOST CONVERTER

A typical power stage of a three-phase APF is composed of a voltage-source converter that is connected in parallel with a nonlinear load (could be several loads) as shown in Fig. 1. The three-phase voltage waveforms Va, Vb, and Vc of the grid is shown in Fig. 2. During each 60 region in Fig. 2, the voltage-source converter in Fig. 1 can be decoupled into a parallel-connected dual-boost converter. For example, in region (0-60), the phase voltage Vb is the lowest. In this case, switch Sbn is kept on and switch Sbp is kept off during the whole 60 region, while switches in the other two branches such as San Sbn and Scn. Scp are controlled complementally (with negligible dead time in between) at the switching frequency (much high than the line frequency). For example, during each switching cycle, if switch Sap is ON, switch San will be OFF and vice versa. The voltages- source converter can be simplified as a parallel-connected dual-boost converter as shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 3(a) shows the three-phase bridge converter with switch ON and OFF; Fig. 3(b) is the simplified circuit of Fig. 3(a); and Fig. 3(c) is the resulting equivalent parallel-connected dual-boost converter with two grid voltages, , are line-to-line voltage and is the dc voltage of the energy storage capacitor. During the steady state, the dc voltage is regulated to a constant voltage against to load variation, so that the net real power flow into the capacitor in a line cycle is zero.

Fig. 3. Transform from six-switch bridge voltage source converter to parallelconnected dual-boost converter during 0 _ 60 region. (a) Voltage-source converter. (b) The reduced converter. (c) The equivalent parallel-connected dualboost converter.

The generalized parallel-connected dual-boost converter is shown in Fig. 4(a) for regions 0, , and Fig. 4(b) for regions , and . The two dual-boost converters are electrically equivalent. Switch pairs , and , are controlled complementally. The inductor currents in and increase when switches and are on, and decrease when switches and are off. The operation is similar to a boost converter. However, because switches , are current bidirectional switches, his dual-boost converter is two-quadrant operated and energy flow is bidirectional. In other words, the energy can flows from the voltage source to the dc capacitor or vice versa because the switches such as can conduct both positive and negative current. In each 60 region of line cycle, the voltage-source converter in Fig. 1 can be decoupled into the dual-boost converter shown in Fig. 4; however, the parameters rotate from each 60 region to another. The cross reference between the bridge voltage-source converter and the parallel-connected dual-boost converter is listed in Table I. The goal of the three-phase APF is to control the three-phase grid currents to follow the threephase grid voltages, respectively. This goal can be realized by controlling the equivalent parallelconnected dual-boost converter. The interpolation of the control goal between the six-switch bridge voltage-source converter and the parallel-connected dual-boost converter during the region is illustrated in Table II.
TABLE I

CROSS REFERENCE OF THE CIRCUIT PARAMETERS AND SYMBOLS BETWEEN THE BRIDGE VOLTAGESOURCE CONVERTER SHOWN IN FIG. 1 AND THE DUAL-BOOST CONVERTER SHOWN IN FIG. 4(b)

TABLE II INTERPOLATION OF THE CONTROL GOAL BETWEEN THE BRIDGE VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTER SHOWN IN FIG. 1 AND THE DUAL-BOOST CONVERTER SHOWN IN FIG. 4(b). DURING THE 0 _ 60 REGION

III. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARALLEL-CONNECTED DUAL-BOOST CONVERTER UNDER TWO-QUADRANT OPERATION For the dual-boost converter shown in Fig. 4(a) or (b), four switch states are available for the two switches and . The switching states and inductor voltages are shown in