A Novel Control System for a Three-Phase Shunt Active Power Filter

In this paper, the validity of a linear complex-valued model proposed for describing a three-phase shunt active filter used to improve the quality of the electrical energy, and the ability of the H_infin control design tool to provide a robust controller capable of compensating current harmonics demanded by switching loads are confirmed through numerical simulations. At a first time, ideal ones are performed by considering the pulse-width modulated voltage source inverter of the active filter as a simple gain. Then, a prototype of an active filtered three-phase power distribution network is built in Simulink in order to reveal difficulties that may be encountered in a real implementation and how one can overcome them. After taking into consideration the modifications required to avoid these difficulties, experimental results based on a laboratory prototype are provided to verify the effectiveness of the control algorithm.