Seven-Level Shunt Active Power Filter for High-Power Drive Systems

In high-power adjustable-speed motor drives, such as those used in electric ship propulsion systems, active filters provide a viable solution to mitigating harmonic related issues caused by diode or thyristor rectifier front-ends. To handle the large compensation currents and provide better thermal management, two or more paralleled semiconductor switching devices can be used. In this paper, a novel topology is proposed where two active filter inverters are connected with tapped reactors to share the compensation currents. The proposed active filter topology can also produce seven voltage levels, which significantly reduces the switching current ripple and the size of passive components. Based on the joint redundant state selection strategy, a current balancing algorithm is proposed to keep the reactor magnetizing current to a minimum. It is shown through simulation that the proposed active filter can achieve high overall system performance. The system is also implemented on a real-time digital simulator to further verify its effectiveness.