Harmonic voltage compensation for single phase power systems

In this paper the problem of improving the power quality for single phase power systems is approached. It is considered the particular case of voltage utility distortion due to the presence of a nonlinear load that generates some voltage harmonics in the network. The proposed solution includes a full-bridge serial voltage active filter equipped with a control law that guarantee, besides global internal stability, perfect cancellation of a pre-specified harmonic. The usefulness of the proposed controller is validated via digital simulations (carried out with the Power Systems Blockset of MATLAB) that incorporates at a large extent the actual behavior of the circuit. In addition of the validation of the theoretical properties, the problem of obtaining high performance in spite estimation instead of measurement of the harmonics was also studied. In this case the load voltage was re-constructed by computing its Fourier series and this (estimated) information was fed back to the controller. The remarkable results was also illustrated with digital simulations.