Improved Active Power Filter Performance Based on an Indirect Current Control Technique

This paper presents a method for the performance improvement of a shunt active power filter (SAPF) using the indirect current control (ICC) scheme. Compared to the conventional direct current control (DCC) scheme, the ICC gives better performance with a lower number of sensors. A simplified and efficient control algorithm using a low cost Intel 80C196KC microcontroller is implemented using only two current sensors for the source current and one voltage sensor for the DC-link voltage of the SAPF circuit. The objective is to eliminate harmonics and to compensate the reactive power produced by non-linear loads such as an uncontrolled rectifier feeding an inductive load. The APF is realized using a three phase voltage source inverter (VSI) with a dc bus capacitor. Experimental results are presented to prove the better performance of the ICC method over the DCC one.