A Design of PWM Controlled Calibrator of Non-Sinusoidal Voltage Waveforms

Power quality conditions in electrical power networks have drastically changed in recent years. A number of electrical devices and power generators that are the main sources of disturbances is ever increasing. Thus, the need for calibrators of different electrical equipment that will be able to generate non-sinusoidal voltages and/or currents has proportionally increased. This paper presents a simple, unconventional approach of generating voltage harmonics, which do not rely on digital-to-analog (D/A) boards and power amplifier to amplify low-voltage signals. A fundamental part of the calibrator is the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) inverter with low-pass LRC filter at its output, which eliminates higher harmonics from the generated voltage. Desired voltage waveform is directly generated at the inverter's output, thus the power amplifier is omitted from the setup. The modulation technique used for controlling IGBTs is the well-known sine pulse width modulation (PWM). Magnitudes and phase angles of the desired harmonics are regulated to compensate for the phenomena that may have a negative influence on their values: Nonlinearities of the system, temperature variation, voltage drops on parasitic components, etc. Experimental results show great potential of the proposed method for the design of the voltage calibrator for various electrical instruments.