Effective current harmonics mitigation at point of common coupling using multilevel active front end converter

An operational analysis of a multilevel active front end rectifier, which has the mitigating capability of the current harmonics generated by the nonlinear loads connected to the same power distribution bus would be presented in this paper. Undesirable conditions in the power network such as voltage unbalances and spikes can affect negatively on the operation of very sensitive electric devices. Thus decreasing the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of the line current at the Point of Common Coupling (PCC) of the utility was the main objective. The control strategy allows the multilevel converter to operate as a rectifier and an active power filter simultaneously. The active front-end rectifier acts directly on the mains line current and forces it to be sinusoidal and in phase with the mains voltage supply. A Space Vector PWM (SVPWM) algorithm with less complexity which gives identical results to the conventional SVPWM is proposed.