Harmonic filtering of high-power 12-pulse rectifier loads with a selective hybrid filter system

Current distortion of 12-pulse rectifier loads is significantly lower compared to six-pulse rectifier loads. However, in passive filtering of the lowest and dominant characteristic 11th and 13th harmonics, the use of 5th and 7th filters is often required in order to prevent possible parallel and series resonance between the passive filter and source impedance which can be excited by source background distortion or by load current residual noncharacteristic harmonics at the 5th and 7th harmonic frequencies. In hybrid filter systems, an active filter (AF) can be added in series with the passive filter in order to isolate the source and load. In most proposed hybrid filter systems, AF control is based on the detection of total current distortion and high-frequency inverters. With a selective AF control system and voltage-controlled inverter, the AF can be controlled to isolate the load at the critical frequencies only while at all other frequencies the passive filter function is preserved so that lower switching frequency and AF rating is required. In this paper, the authors present a selective AF filter control system and simple hybrid filter topology suitable for the compensation of high-power 12-pulse rectifier loads. Harmonic current controllers based on the second-order infinite-impulse response digital resonant filters are used, as they can be considered as simple digital algorithms for more complex double cascaded synchronous-reference-frame-based proportional plus integral controllers. They are centered to the targeted harmonic frequencies by using an adaptive fundamental frequency tracking filter. This approach gives good results, even if the reference waveform (in our case, a load voltage) is highly distorted or unbalanced and no separate phaselocked loop is required. Test results for a laboratory model of this system and stability analysis are presented and the importance of delay-time compensation is discussed.