DC-Link Voltage Balance Control in Three-phase Four-wire Active Power Filters

The three-phase four-wire shunt active power filter (APF) is an effective method to solve the harmonic problem in three-phase four-wire power systems. In addition, it has two possible topologies, a four-leg inverter and a three-leg inverter with a split-capacitor. There are some studies investigating DC-link voltage control in three-phase four-wire APFs. However, when compared to the four-leg inverter topology, maintaining the balance between the DC-link upper and lower capacitor voltages becomes a unique problem in the three-leg inverter with a split-capacitor topology, and previous studies seldom pay attention to this fact. In this paper, the influence of the balance between the two DC-link voltages on the compensation performance, and the influence of the voltage balance controller on the compensation performance, are analyzed. To achieve the balance between the two DC-link capacitor voltages, and to avoid the adverse effect the voltage balance controller has on the APF compensation performance, a new DC-link voltage balance control strategy for the three-phase four-wire split-capacitor APF is proposed. Representative simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the analysis and the proposed DC-link voltage balance control strategy.