Power quality improvements in Isolated Microgrid based on Shunt Active Power Filter

Among all the available sources of energy, Electrical energy is widely used in many sectors because of ease of transportation, flexibility and control. The development of any country directly relies on the growth of power sector. Most of the rural India still do not have adequate household connections, due mainly to remotely placed localities. Further, it is not economically viable to run the transmission lines. Hence, to electrify the remote sites, Isolated Microgrids are increasingly being studied, as a solution, by the research fraternity. In this paper, Power quality concerns, involving mainly the mitigation of load current harmonics and frequency regulation as applied to Isolated Microgrid are considered. A shunt Active Power Filter and associated control strategy is developed in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. The shunt APF in conjunction with the discrete frequency controller performs well under different steady state and transient conditions. The proposed model is shown to yield results that are in line with the established patterns. The proposed model has a THD of less than 5%, which compiles well with that specified by the IEEE 519 standard.