Achieving maximum possible power factor with single-phase shunt active power filter under distorted supply condition

In this paper, a new control approach for the load compensation using single-phase shunt active power filter (APF) under distorted supply condition is presented. The objective of the proposed approach is to achieve maximum possible power factor under distorted supply condition keeping total demand distortion (TDD) within the acceptable limit. To achieve unity power factor (UPF) under sinusoidal supply, the compensated source current should be harmonic free (HF). On the other hand under distorted supply, the source current waveform should have same shape as supply voltage including all the harmonics of voltage for UPF operation. The requirements of harmonic free source current and high power factor are contradictory to each other under distorted supply voltage. Hence there should be a compromised operation between these two important aspects of load compensation. The proposed control approach presented in this paper always ensures maximum power factor by exploiting TDD limits set by standards. The proposed algorithm is validated through simulation studies perform under MATLAB/ SIMULINK environment. All the details of this work are presented.