A new control strategy to improve the performance of a PWM AC to DC converter under unbalanced operating conditions

Abnormal harmonics of significant magnitude are generated at the output and input terminals of a PWM (pulse-width-modulated) AC-to-DC power converter under unbalanced operating conditions. A new control strategy is presented to selectively cancel the generated lower-order abnormal harmonics at the output and input terminals and thereby to preserve the high-performance features of a PWM AC-to-DC power converter. The proposed technique essentially involves computing the sequence components of the unbalanced input supply and suitably counter-unbalances the PWM gating signals of the power converter switches to cancel the generated abnormal harmonics. The technique is essentially a feedforward approach and is suitable for higher-power GTO (gate turn-off thyristor) type PWM AC-to-DC power converters. A procedure for implementing this technique in real time is discussed. Selected results are verified experimentally on a prototype PWM AC-to-DC power converter