Shaping the current waveform of an active filter for optimized system level harmonic conditioning
Original version
Helfert, Markus; Gusikhin, Oleg [Eds.] Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Vehicle Technology and Intelligent Transport Systems p. 98-106, SciTePress, 2015 10.5220/0005488800980106Abstract
Harmonic voltages and currents in electrical systems, when present to a certain degree, represent not only a
power quality problem but they are also strongly associated with the electrical system overall losses and they
are arguably a source of instability and a safety concern. Mitigating harmonics distortion across the entire
system by actively reducing harmonic currents propagation is an effective way of coping with these issues and
can be dealt with the injection of a compensating current waveform with an active filter installed at a given
bus. This paper shows how, by shaping the compensating current waveform in an optimal way, the overall
electrical system harmonic distortion can be optimally reduced in a cost effective manner with a minimum
size of the compensating device. The process of shaping this optimal compensating current is shown by how
its components are defined by the optimization algorithm using the phase and amplitude of each harmonic as
degrees of freedom in the process of finding the optimal waveform. A marine vessel distribution grid is used
as representative example to prove the concept.