A Unified Converter Topology for Electric Spring

Chi Kwan Lee1 , Heng Liu1 , Guidong Zhang1 , Shuo Yan1 , Eberhard Waffenschmidt2 , and Ron S.Y. Hui1,3
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Email: liuheng@eee.hku.hk
2
Institute of Electrical Power Engineering, Cologne University of Applied Science, Cologne, Germany
Email: eberhard.waffenschmidt@th-koeln.de
3
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
Email: r.hui@imperial.ac.uk

Abstract—Recently, Electric Spring (ES) technology is pro-
posed to solve the power quality issues due to high penetration of
distributed renewable energy generation. A variety of topologies
and compensation methods have been proposed to solve the power
quality issues. This paper proposes a unified converter topology
for ES, which combines series and shunt power compensators
for simultaneous active and reactive power compensation. The
new topology is implemented on a conventional three-phase full-
bridge module, which benefits the reduction of cost for the
converter. Corresponding operating principles of this converter
are developed and verified through practical measurements.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The utilization of renewable energy sources in electric
power generation provides us an effective way solving the en-
ergy crises and environmental issues. Unfortunately, renewable
energy also poses a great challenge to power system operation
and management because of their intermittent and distributed
nature [1]. Apart from the traditional solutions implemented on
the transmission level like static var compensation, transformer
tap changer, flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) [2]
and energy storage system, new demand-side management
methods have also been proposed to improve the power quality
of the future renewable grid.
Recently, Electric Spring (ES) concept has been proposed
as a new demand-side response technology to tackle the
problem arising from the distributed renewable energy pow-
er generation [3]–[5]. Unlike the conventional compensation
devices, ES is integrated with end users’ load to form a
smart load which adaptively adjusts the active and reactive
power consumption to reduce the grid voltage fluctuation and
imbalance between electricity generation and load demand.
So far, ES has experienced three versions. In [3] the first
generation (ES-1) is originally proposed and implemented on
a PWM inverter connected in series with a non-critical load
as shown in Fig. 1(a). ES-1 generates a voltage perpendicular
with the non-critical load current to alter the non-critical load
voltage. Thus, the active and reactive power consumption of
the non-critical load can be adjusted. ES-1 has been experi-
mentally proven that it contributes to grid voltage regulation
978-1-4673-8617-3/16/$31.00
c 2016 IEEE
and primary frequency control in the renewable energy power
grid [3], [6].
ES-2 is presented in [5] by replacing the capacitor on the
DC-bus of ES-1 inverter with battery. This modification allows
ES-2 to exchange active and reactive power simultaneously
because the output voltage of ES-2 is no longer restricted to
be perpendicular with the non-critical load current [5], [7].
As a result, ES-2 is able to provide multiple functions includ-
ing power factor correction [8], voltage distortion reduction
[9], and three-phase imbalance reduction [10], in addition to
voltage and frequency regulation [11]. However, the battery
storage poses several potential problems such as high cost,
short service life and large size.
The third version of ES consists of two bidirectional invert-
ers connected back-to-back (BTB) through a common DC-bus
[12] (see Fig. 1(b)) while the series inverter provides active
and reactive power compensation to the non-critical load, the
shunt inverter controlling the active power regulates the DC-
bus voltage. Replacing the passive battery into an active power
inverter, the drawbacks of using battery storage in ES-2 are
waived. However, this topology requires a transformer at either
series or shunt converter to provide isolation (i.e. a step-down
transformer is needed at the series inverter output to isolate
the inverter from the grid).
In this paper, a unified topology for ES is proposed to fulfill
all kinds of power compensation functions. This topology can
be implemented on a standard three-phase inverter module
which substantially simplifies the circuit design and reduces
the manufacturing cost [13]–[15].This unified topology gets
rid of the problems such as energy storage, transformer iso-
lation, etc. The operating principle of this unified topology is
developed and verified through practical measurements.
II. O PERATING P RINCIPLES OF THE U NIFIED T OPOLOGY
Fig. 2 shows the power circuit of the unified ES topology,
which is implemented on a standard three-phase inverter
module. A LCL filter is used between the power source and the
inverter to obtain effective reduction of switching frequency
harmonics while a LC filter is used at the output side for the
non-critical load.
 (a)
(b)
Fig. 1. Schematic of ES. (a) The first generation of ES. (b) Latest version of
ES with BTB configuration.
Fig. 2. Unified ES topology.
With a single converter circuit, the novel ES is able to
operate in three different modes, namely, series compensator,
series–to–shunt compensator and shunt–to–shunt compensator.
A. Series compensator
This operation is equivalent to ES-1 technology. The con-
verter legs U and W act as a a series compensator connected
between the AC mains VS and non-critical load RNC while
the leg V is disabled by turning off the power devices gate
signals. The power circuit of the converter operated as a series
compensator is shown in Fig. 3a and its equivalent circuit
depicted in Fig. 3b is identical to that of ES-1.
The legs U and W are controlled by PWM signals to gen-
erate a compensative voltage in series with VS and RNC . The
magnitude and phase angle of the voltage VUW is controlled to
create a potential and phase difference with VS . As a result, the
active power PS and reactive power QS of the smart load are
altered. Without the internal energy storage system, the phase
angle of VUW must be perpendicular with the non-critical load
current whereby the converter provides only reactive power
compensation.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Circuit of the converter operates as a series compensator. (a) Power
Circuit, (b) Equivalent circuit.
B. Series–to–Shunt compensator
The Series–to–Shunt compensator can remove the restric-
tion of ES-1 by connecting a second converter at the DC
link in a back-to-back configuration to exchange the active
power through the power grid as shown in Fig. 4a. The legs
U and W form the series converter connected between the VS
and non-critical load RNC and the legs U and V form the
shunt converter connected to power grid VS . Fig. 4b shows its
equivalent circuit which is similar to an unified power flow
conditioner (UPFC).
For the series converter, the magnitude and phase angle of
the series voltage VUW can be controlled separately to adjust
the active power PS and reactive power QS consumption of the
smart load. The excess energy absorbed by the series converter
can be delivered to the power grid while the shortage power of
series converter can be absorbed from the power grid by the
shunt converter. Thereby, the shunt converter plays the role of
regulating the DC link voltage VDC of the converter system.
Now that the phase angle of the voltage injection by the series
converter is allowed to vary freely, processing both active and
reactive power. Negating the power losses in the converter
system, the total active power consumption of the system will
be equal to the power consumption of the non-critical load.
To reduce the size of the power circuit, we keep the power
rating of the shunt converter at the minimum by operating it at
the unity power factor. Therefore, it only processes the active
power for the series converter.
C. Shunt–to–Shunt compensator
The converter operated as a Shunt-to-Shunt compensator
is shown in Fig. 5a. The converter legs U and V form the
primary converter connected parallel to the power grid VS .
The legs V and W form the secondary converter connected

(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. Circuit of the converter operates as a series-to-shunt compensator. (a)
Power circuit (b) Equivalent Circuit.
to the output for the non-critical load RNC . The equivalent
circuit of the Shunt–to–Shunt compensator with back-to-back
converters configuration is shown in Fig. 5b.
The primary converter is operated in synchronized with
VS . The voltage magnitude and phase angle of VUV can
be controlled separately to adjust the active and reactive
power consumption of the converter. The secondary converter
works as a voltage source providing a variable AC voltage
for the non-critical load. With the back-to-back converters
configuration, the active power is transferred from the primary
side VUV to secondary side RNC through the DC bus. While
the input active power absorbed from the power grid is equal
to the output power of the non-critical load, the DC bus voltage
is regulated. Moreover, with the voltages of the DC bus and
secondary converter controlled independently, the converter
system can provide voltage step-up or step-down functions.
Fig. 6 shows the control block diagram for Shunt-to-Shunt
compensation which is implemented with d-q decomposition
control scheme. The input voltage VS and input current IS
of the smart load are measured to calculate the total active
and reactive power consumption of the smart load. VS is
also used to generate sine and cosine reference for the d-
q decomposition through the phase locked loop(PLL). In
the d-q decomposition control scheme, the DC voltage is
regulated by using the q-controller and the d-controller is
used to control the reactive power consumption of the smart
load. A modulating signal for the primary converter vprimary
is the summation of the d-q components. This modulation
signal is sent to PWM generation module to generate PWM
signals for legs U and V. To control the voltage of the non-
critical load, the modulating reference signal for the secondary
converter vsecondary is created by multiplying the vprimary with
a controllable modulation index. vsecondary is sent to generate
PWM signal for leg W.

(a)

Fig. 6. Control diagram for Shunt-to-Shunt compensation.

III. I MPLEMENTATION FOR THE PROPOSED TOPOLOGY

To verify the proposed topology for ES and the three
operation modes, simulations and experimental are conducted.

A. Simulation results
Simulations are conducted in MATLAB/Simulink with pa-
(b) rameters listed in Table I.
Fig. 5. Circuit of the converter operates as a series-to-shunt compensator. (a) The results of smart load operated at 1000W and -500Var
Power circuit (b) Equivalent Circuit. with different compensation modes are shown in Fig. 7- 8.
 TABLE I
PARAMETERS FOR SIMULATION

LU1 = 5mH
VS 220V, 50Hz LCL Filter LU2 = 5mH
CU = 3.3uF
LW = 5mH
VDC 400V LC Filter
CW = 3.3uF
Switching
RNC 44Ω 10kHz
frequecy

Fig. 7 shows the steady-state waveforms of Series-to-Shunt

compensator. It is important to note that the change of active
and reactive power of the smart load is mainly relied on the AC
voltage (represented by VS − Vload in Fig. 7) generated by the
series inverter. The series inverter processes both active and
reactive power. The shunt inverter only processes the active
power to maintain a stable DC bus voltage. It can be observed
Fig. 8. Steady state waveforms of Shunt-to-Shunt compensator at 1000 W,
that the current flowing through the inverter leg V is small -500 Var.
and in-phase with VS .
Fig. 8 shows the steady-state waveforms of Shunt-to-Shunt
compensator. The primary inverter deals with both active PS an LCL filter and to the non-critical load through an output
and reactive power QS . Thus, the current flowing through the LC filter. The specifications of the prototype are listed in Table
inverter leg V is larger than series-to-shunt compensation. The II. The ES control algorithms is implemented in dSPACE
magnitude and phase angle of the output voltage Vload can be DS1104 controller. Three compensation modes are tested and
controlled independently to achieve desired active power. The the experimental results are measured in Fig. 10 to Fig. 12.
active power consumption of primary inverter has to be equal
to the output active power of secondary inverter in order to
stabilize the DC bus voltage.

Fig. 9. Experimental setup.

TABLE II
S PECIFICATIONS OF PROTOTYPE

LU1 = 15mH
VS 110V, 50Hz LCL Filter LU2 = 5mH
CU = 13.2uF
Fig. 7. Steady state waveforms of Series-to-Shunt compensator at 1000 W,
-500 Var. LW = 5mH
VDC 300V LC Filter
CW = 13.2uF
Switching
B. Experimental results RNC 25 ∼ 50Ω 10kHz
frequecy
An experimental prototype is built to practically verify the
proposed topology as shown in Fig. 9. Three single-phase half- As shown in Fig. 10, when the converter works in the series
bridge inverters are connected in parallel to form a unified compensation mode, inverter leg V is disabled and IV is zero.
converter. The converter is connected to an AC source through IU and IW are of the same magnitude but in opposite phase
angle. Since the phase angle of VUW must be perpendicular
with the non-critical load current IW , the active and reactive
power of the converter can not be controlled at the same time.
The converter delivers 200 capacitive Var to the power grid,
the active power has to be reduced to 150 W.
In the Series-to-Shunt and Shunt-to-Shunt compensation
modes, the active and reactive power can be controlled si-
multaneously. In Fig. 11 the converter operates at 250W and -
200Var in Series-to-Shunt compensation mode. The active and
reactive power of the smart load is controlled by the series
converter. IV is small because the shunt converter only deals
with a small amount of active power to stabilize the DC-bus
voltage. For the same power compensation, the converter has
a large IV when it operates in Shunt-to-Shunt compensation
mode as shown in Fig. 12. In this compensation mode, leg U
and leg V act as the primary converter which not only transfers
active power to the output load but also processes the reactive
Fig. 11. Steady state waveforms of Series-to-Shunt compensator at 250 W,
power. -200 Var.

Fig. 10. Steady state waveforms of Series compensator the converter at 150 Fig. 12. Steady state waveforms of Shunt-to-Shunt compensator at 250 W,
W, -200 Var. -200 Var.

IV. C ONCLUSION R EFERENCES

A unified converter topology for Electric Spring is proposed
in this paper. This converter topology not only provides all the
functions and features of existing ES technologies but also
eliminates the problems of transformer isolation or energy
storage. Three operating modes of the converter and their
control schemes are developed and tested. Simulation and
experimental results are presented to validate the proposed
solution.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are grateful to the Research Grant Council of
Hong Kong for their support under the Germany/Hong Kong
Joint Research Scheme G-HKU701/15.
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