Implementation of a three-phase capacitor-clamped active power filter under unbalanced condition

A capacitor-clamped voltage-source inverter for active power filter operation under balanced and unbalanced conditions is proposed to suppress current harmonics and compensate the reactive power generated from the nonlinear loads. The adopted voltage-source inverter is based on a three-level capacitor-clamped topology to reduce the voltage stress of power semiconductors. Two control loops are used in the control scheme to achieve harmonic and reactive currents compensation and to regulate the inverter do side voltage. In the adopted inverter, the neutral point voltage is compensated by a voltage compensator to obtain the balanced capacitor voltages on the do side. In order to control the flying capacitor voltages, two redundant states in each inverter leg can be selected to compensate the flying capacitor to obtain a better voltage waveform with low harmonic contents on the ac terminals. The balanced and sinusoidal line currents are drawn from the ac source under the balanced and unbalanced conditions. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is confirmed through experimental results.