Active front-end design criteria

In this paper some design criteria for an Active Front-End (AFE) are presented. The rules are formulated on the basis of the rated power of the line where the AFE is connected. The proposed AFE is based on the Voltage Processing and Supply Current Reaction algorithm for Power Shunt Active Filters and performs the AC/DC conversion, the line current distortions and the reactive power compensation. A shunt capacitive filter is presented to compensate not only the node voltage disturbances due to the AFE switching, but also the average reactive power. The design criteria and the problems connected to the passive filter are discussed. Numerical simulations validate the proposed criteria.