Use of dominant harmonic active filters in high power applications

The application of power electronics equipment is increasing rapidly. It is estimated that 60% of electrical power will be processed by power electronics equipment by year 2000. These equipments typically require rectifiers for AC-DC power conversion. Due to their nonlinear nature, most rectifiers draw harmonic current from the utility grid. The harmonic current causes higher energy losses, and may excite resonance conditions in the utility grid. Harmonic standards such as IEEE 519 and IEC 1000-3-2 have been proposed to regulate the harmonic current and voltage levels.; This work is to develop a dominant harmonic active filter (DHAF) to realize a cost-effective active filtering solution for nonlinear loads in the range of megawatt and above. The DHAF system achieves harmonic isolation at dominant harmonic frequencies, e.g. the 5th and 7th. This approach allows use of low switching frequency and small rating active filter inverters (1%–2% of the load MVA rating) for implementation. Review of conventional passive filters and various active filters based on high bandwidth PWM inverters is provided. The control theory of the DHAF system is presented. Comparison of the DHAF system and other dominant harmonic filtering approach is provided. Simulation results and laboratory prototype test results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed DHAF system.