Performance Investigation of High Level Modular
Multilevel Inverter based Shunt Hybrid Active
Power Filter
Tue Demirdelen, Rahmi lker Kayaalp and Mehmet Tmay
AbstractThe multilevel inverters have become popular
equipment for medium and high power applications in recent
years. These inverters can constitute high voltage and decrease
harmonics by their own circuit topologies. This paper presents
a modular multilevel inverters based SHAPF for medium
voltage applications, focusing on its control method and
operating performance. The compensation process is based on
synchronous reference frame method. Theoretical analyses
and simulation results are obtained from an actual industrial
network model in PSCAD. The simulation results are
presented for a proposed system in order to demonstrate that
the harmonic compensation performance meets the IEEE-519
standard.
Index TermsHarmonics ,modular multilevel inverter,
power quality, PSCAD, reactive power, shunt hybrid active
power filter
I. INTRODUCTION
I N recent years, most of industrial applications require
medium/high power. Thus, they need medium voltage
devices. Multilevel inverters are achieved these levels with
using medium voltage apparatures. The modular multilevel
inverters have been used as an alternative choice to replace
traditional multilevel inverters such as diode clamped
multilevel inverters, capacitor clamped multilevel inverters
etc. Modular multilevel inverters (M2Ls) are capable of
minimizing the total harmonic distortion on ac sides. In
addition, they have low voltage stress on switching devices
and low dv/dt.
A modular cascaded multilevel inverter topology has
a series of H bridge cells in each of its three phases. Each
cell has four switches: s1&s3 are complementary and s2&s4
are complementary, too in Table I.
TABLE I. SIMULATION SIGNALS
S1 S2 Vout
0 0 0 performance meets the IEEE-519 standard.
0 1 -Vdc
1 0 -Vdc
1 1 0 II. PROPOSED SYSTEM AND CONTROLLER
Power quality is an important topic that becomes
increasingly necessity to electricity consumers at low, medium,
The authors would like to acknowledge the Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey (TBTAK Project Number: 115R327) and
the Scientific Project Unit of Cukurova University (FDK-2016-5828) for
full financial support. Tue Demirdelen, Rahmi lker Kayaalp and
Mehmet Tmay are with the Department of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, ukurova University, Saricam / Adana, 01330, Turkey. (e-
mails: tdemirdelen@cu.edu.tr, ikayaalp@cu.edu.tr, mtumay@cu.edu.tr).
Corresponding author: T. Demirdelen (e-mail: tdemirdelen@cu.edu.tr)
978-1-4673-9575-5/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
high power of usage.Linear and nonlinear loads are usually
used in not only the industrial but also domestic
applications.These equipments cause to distortion of power
quality. The grid voltage and currents become non-
sinusoidal form due to nonlinear loads. It is called
harmonics. In order to reduce the current harmonic
pollution, passive filter is one of the traditional solutions
ineffectively. As another of the recommended technology in
providing the power quality, the active power filter has
become a new research topic that is ameliorated the
problems of the passive filter. Hybrid active power filters
effectively smooth the problems of the passive filter and an
active power filter solution with ensuring cost effective
harmonic compensation. To improve the performance of the
hybrid active power filters, numerous control methods such
as pq theory [1-3], fast fourier transform [3], dq theory [4-
5], fuzzy controller [6-7] etc. have been applied in
literature.
Several hybrid APF (HAPF) topologies constitute
active and passive parts in series and/or parallel have been
proposed in [8-10]. Between these HAPF topologies, active
power filter connected in series with shunt passive filter
(Shunt HAPF) [1-7, 11-18] has been used to compensate
harmonic and reactive power. Most of articles about
SHAPF are realized for low voltage level. On the contrary,
Multilevel SHAPF [19-21] is the most used in medium/high
voltage levels in industrial applications.
This paper presents the performance analysis of
modular cascaded multilevel inverter based shunt hybrid
active power filter. The main aim of this paper is to observe
and minimize the source-side current THD values by using
high voltage level multilevel inverter based SHAPF.
Theoretical analyses and simulation results are obtained
from an actual industrial network model in PSCAD. The
simulation results are presented for a proposed system in
order to demonstrate that the harmonic compensation
The proposed system is represented in Fig. 1. The
SHAPF unit is combined by modular multilevel inverter
topology and passive filter. The loads have both linear and
nonlinear characteristics. The grid voltages are balanced to
eachother. The controller of proposed system consists of
three main parts shown in Fig. 2: the harmonic reference
generation, the dc link voltage controller, the final reference
compensation current and PWM control block.
This control scheme of the M-SHAPF is based on a
synchronous reference frame and is simpler and easier to
implement. Three loops have been implemented; the first
loop ensures the shaping of the ac currents, by using source
currents through the control of dq currents components. The

Eb
Ea
Ec
second loop regulates the dc bus voltage to its set reference
adjusting by the demand of the reactive power
compensation. The final loop generate firing signal for PLL
inverter side.

Harmonic Current Reference Generation

Id_lpf
Isa abc d Id -+ d Ia_harmonic_ref
Isb 
q - Ib_harmonic_ref
Isc Iq q abc Ic_harmonic_ref
+
Iq_lpf
(a)

DC Link Voltage Control

Limitter d Vcappi_a
+ VERROR 0
Vcappi_b
V*DC
-
 k p + ki q abc Vcappi_c

VDC
(b)

Final Reference Compensation Current and PWM Control Block

In_harmonic_ref

+
 Reference

+
Switching
Signals
Fig. 1. Modular Cascaded Multilevel Inverter based SHAPF with Vcappi_n S1n-32n
connecting grid and loads Carrier1
(n=a,b,c)

A. Harmonic Current Reference Generation

Carrier2
The harmonic current control of M-SHAPF is shown
in Fig. 2 (a). The first step is to isolate the harmonic PWM
components from the fundamental component of the grid Carrier3 Gate
currents. This is achieved through the dq transformation (2), Signals
synchronized with the PCC voltage vector, and a first order
low pass filter (LPF) with cut off frequency of 10 Hz. Then Carrier4
the dq inverse transformation (4) produces the harmonic
currents in the abc referential frame.
The conversion matrix is Carrier5

cos p cos( p 2 ) cos( p + 2 )
3 3
2
T123 = sin p sin( p 2 ) sin( p + 2 ) Carrier6
dq 3 3 3 (1)

2 2 2
2 2 2 Carrier7

id iSa Carrier8
i = T 123 i
q dq Sb (2) (c)
io iSc Fig. 2. Controller System Block Diagram
And the inverse conversion matrix is
The final reference current consists of three phase
harmonic reference current signals and dc link control
2
cos p sin p signals. The reference signal (In_harmonic_ref + Vcappi_n, n=a,b,c )
2 is generated using these signals together. Then, the
2 2
cos( p 2 ) sin( p 2 )
dq reference signals are compared with carrier signal to
T = (3)
123 3 3 3 2 generate switching signals shown in Fig. 2 (c).

cos( + 2 ) sin( + 2 ) 2
p p

3 3 2
III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
ia _ harmonic _ ref id _ lpf The simulation studies are carried out using
dq
ib _ harmonic _ ref =
123 iq _ lpf
T (4) PSCAD/EMTDC. The main purpose of the simulation is to
i i evaluate the effectiveness and correctness of the control
c _ harmonic _ ref o _ lpf strategy with using high level multilevel inverter based
SHAPF. Parameters used in simulations are given in Table
II. In simulation, the nominal frequency of the power grid is
B. DC Link Voltage Controller
50 Hz and the harmonic current source is generated by the
The reference dc link voltage is determined with the three phase diode rectifier. The phase to the phase grid
equation (5). Moreover, a proportional-integral controller is voltage is 6.3 kV. The passive filters are tuned at 5th and
used to control the SHAPF dc bus voltage shown in Fig. 2 the control signals of IGBTs are generated through the pulse
(b). width modulation generator whose amplitude and frequency
For only harmonic compensation, the required DC of carrier wave are 1 and 20 kHz, respectively.
link voltage value is:
n TABLE II. SIMULATION PARAMETERS
Z F ,h I filter,h < VDC (harmonic) (5) Parameters Value
h 1 Line Voltage 6.3 kV
Line frequency 50 Hz
Where h represents the order of the harmonic, Ifilter,h Supply inductance (Ls) 1 mH
is the filter current and ZF,h is the impedance of the LC filter Rectifier inductance (Ll) 0.6 mH
at the corresponding harmonic frequency. Filter (CF,LF) 16 F, 25 mH
Load Resistances(Rload1 ) 200 
By using the error signal generated by the Load Inductances(Lload1) 600 mH
conventional PI controller, the dq inverse transformation (6) Load Inductances(Lac1) 13 mH
produces the reference DC link control signals in the abc Switching frequency (fswitching) 20 kHz
referential frame shown in Fig. 2 (b). A limiter is also Simulation Step Time 40 s
applied to avoid the overflow problem of the controller. DC Nonlinear Load 60 kVAR
Tuned freq. of series filter (ftuned) 250 Hz
link is controlled by the reactive component of the error
signal. Thus, only the q component is used for dq inverse
transformation. Fig. 5 illustrates the three phase source voltages, the
load currents, the SHAPF currents, the source currents
V 0
cappi _ a waveforms when SHAPF is not connected to the system.
dq
V =
cappi _ b 123 Verrror
T (6) The source currents are non-sinusoidal form. As shown in
V Fig. 6 and Fig 7. Source currents harmonics is nearly equal
c appi _ c 0
to load currents harmonics. The THD value is nearly equal
to 20.0383%.
C. Multilevel Inverter Control, Final Reference In 0.4s , the SHAPF is connected to the system.
Compensation Current and PWM Control Block Then it compensates the harmonics, the source side THD is
nearly 2.11%. Three phase source voltages, load currents,
In this paper, seventeen level modular multilevel SHAPF currents and source currents are shown in Fig.8.
inverter is applied for shunt hybrid active power filter. 17 When SHAPF is connected to the system. The source
level modular cascaded multilevel inverter dc link voltages current waveform becomes sinusoidal form. The harmonics
are shown in Fig.3. In addition, eight pulses for one phase and THD value of source current is shown in Fig. 9 and Fig.
are shown in Fig.4. 10.
Individual harmonic distortion of the load and source
1875

1500
currents is summarized in Table III. When the level of
1125
SHAPF is increased, the higher and total harmonics of
750 source side are decreased with predictable amount.
375
As a result, it is clearly shown that the SHAPF using
0

-375
the modular cascaded multilevel inverter can provide higher
-750
performance the harmonic compensation.
-1125

-1500

-1875

0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

Fig. 3. 17 level Modular Cascaded Multilevel Inverter

DC Link Voltage
 Three Phase Source Voltages (V)
a b c
4

6000
3.5 4000
2000
3
0
-2000
2.5
-4000
2
-6000
Three Phase Load Currents (A)
100
1.5

-100
3.5
Three Phase SHAPF Currents (A)
50
3

2.5

1.5
-50

100
Three Phase Source Currents (A)
1

3.5

-100
3
0.100 0.110 0.120 0.130 0.140 0.150 0.160 0.170 0.180 0.190 0.200
2.5
Fig. 5. Three phase source voltages, load currents, SHAPF currents and
2 source currents when SHAPF is not connected to the system
1.5

3.5

2.5

1.5

3.5
Fig. 6. Source side currents harmonics when SHAPF is not connected to
3
the system
2.5

1.5

3.5

2.5
Fig. 7. THD values of Source side currents when SHAPF is not connected
to the system
2

1.5

a b c
Three Phase Source Voltages (V)
1 6000
4000
0
2000
4 0
-2000
3.5
-4000
-6000
3

100
Three Phase Load Currents (A)
2.5

1.5

-100
1

50
Three Phase SHAPF Currents (A)
0

3.5

3 -50

2.5 100 Three Phase Source Currents (A)

1.5

1 -100
0.950 0.960 0.970 0.980 0.990 1.000 1.010 1.020 1.030 1.040
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

Fig. 4. One Phase Eight Pulses Fig. 8. Three phase source voltages, load currents, SHAPF currents and
source currents when SHAPF is connected to the system
TABLE III. INDIVIDUAL HARMONIC DISTORTION OF THE LOAD
AND SOURCE CURRENTS
Harmo
nic 3 5 7 9 11 13 15
Order
Load
0.053 25.72 10.66 0.099 4.802 2.466 0.009
THD
Source
THD 3 0.047 0.383 0.966 0.015 1.216 0.719 0.0035
level Fig. 10. THD values of Source side currents when SHAPF is connected to
Source the system
THD 5 0.041 0.089 0.832 0.013 1.132 0.657 0.0358
level
Source
THD 7 0.033 0.069 0.718 0.002 1.073 0.471 0.038 IV. CONCLUSION
level
Source
The performance analysis of modular multilevel
THD 9 0.030 0.056 0.685 0.019 0.999 0.365 0.026 inverter based SHAPF is done, in order to ensure the ac
level current shaping. The harmonic compensation is obtained by
Source
THD 11 0.026 0.049 0.569 0.016 0.965 0.325 0.023 regulating the currents of the power systems. The harmonic
level compensation performance is satisfactory. The simulation
Source
THD 13 0.018 0.043 0.465 0.0156 0.936 0.316 0.012
results of the three phase three wire SHAPF are illustrated
level to verify all discussion and analysis. In addition, it shows
Source the effectiveness of this system. Hence, the proposed
THD 15 0.015 0.032 0.356 0.013 0.903 0.302 0.010
level SHAPF system can be effective and economic solution for
Source harmonic problems caused by the large capacity of
THD 17 0.012 0.025 0.213 0.0111 0.865 0.265 0.089
level
nonlinear loads in medium/high power application.

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