Advanced Active Power Conditioner to improve power quality in microgrids

This paper presents a three-phase Active Power Conditioner to improve power quality in microgrids based on renewable energy. A microgrid is a weak electrical grid which can be easily subject to disturbances. The Active Power Conditioner (APC) presented in this paper acts as an interface between renewable energy sources and the AC bus of a microgrid and uses an improved control strategy, which makes possible to inject energy in the microgrid, compensate the current harmonics and correct the power factor. Moreover, the proposed control strategy allows the line current at the point of common coupling (PCC) to be balanced and sinusoidal even when the load is unbalanced. Consequently, the voltage at the PPC becomes balanced. Simulation results show the validity of the innovative control strategy.