A Comparative Performance Analysis of Four Control Algorithms for a Three Phase Shunt Active Power Filter

Shunt Active Power Filters (SAPFs) represent the most important and widely used filter in industrial purposes due to the fact that, they not only eliminate the harmonic current with a neglected amount of active fundamental current supplied to compensate system losses, but also they are suitable for a wide range of power ratings. One of the key issues for a proper implementation of an active filter is to use a good control algorithm for reference current generation. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of four approaches for determining the reference compensation currents of SAPF to maintain sinusoidal source currents supplied to nonlinear loads according to IEEE-519 standard. The approaches to be compared include the instantaneous reactive power theory, synchronous reference frame theory, synchronous detection method and perfect harmonic elimination method. Models of a power line with a nonlinear load using the above four approaches are developed using MATLAB-Simulink and are simulated for both balanced and unbalanced conditions.