International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

Fuzzy logic controlled shunt active power filter for reactive power compensation
and harmonic elimination
Nitin Gupta and S. P. Singh

S. P. Dubey

Department of Electrical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.)
Roorkee-India
nitindee@iitr.ernet.in, spseefee@iitr.ernet.in

Department of Electrical Engineering

R.C.E.T.
Bhilai, India
spdubfee@iitr.ernet.in
topology has been considered. Shunt APF harmonic current
is equal but opposite in-phase with the required harmonic
component of load current. Computation of reference
current signal and switching pulse generation for voltage
source inverter (VSI) is main task. Various control
approaches such as instantaneous reactive power theory [2],
synchronous reference frame theory, closed loop PI control
[9], etc. are used for generation of reference current signal
by sensing combinations of source voltage, load current,
filter current and source current. More number of sensor
increase complexity and not cost effective solutions. Hence,
control algorithm should be such that which give its best
performance under steady-state as well as transient load
conditions with less sensor count. Duke et al. [10] have
proposed simple synthetic sinusoidal generation technique
by sensing load current which further modified by sensing
source current only [11].
The conventional methods use PI controller to regulate
the DC bus voltage of VSI. Nemours methods have been
proposed to replace PI control scheme such as optimal
regulator control [12], sliding mode control [13], and model
reference adaptive control. However, the design of these
mentioned controllers depends on derived accurate
mathematical models which are difficult to obtain. Also,
these models do not give satisfactory operation under
varying load condition with increased nonlinearity [8], [14],
[15].
Artificial intelligence is one of the key area to solve such
system complexity and make control more robust for
transient conditions. Neural network, fuzzy logic, expert
system, various other optimization methods are used for the
improvement of power quality [15]. Fuzzy logic control
(FLC) is one of the significant tool in control design
originated by Zadeh [16]. The advantages of FLC over
conventional controllers are high robustness, insensitivity to
parameters variations, handling of non-linearity and
independent on mathematical models [8], [15], [17]-[19].
This paper presents a fuzzy logic controlled shunt APF
for the elimination of current harmonics and reactive power
compensation of nonlinear load. The control scheme is
based on indirect current control scheme in which only
source current is sensed for avoiding switching spikes [20].
Three phase voltage and current signal is sensed using
two voltage and current sensors. The effectiveness and
validity of the proposed FLC is verified through MATLAB
simulation. The total harmonic distortion (THD) results

Abstract Active filters are widely used in electrical

distribution system for reactive power compensation and
voltage / current harmonic elimination. In this paper, a fuzzy
logic controlled, three-phase shunt active filter to improve
power quality by compensating reactive power and current
harmonics required by a nonlinear load is presented. PI
regulator is replaced by fuzzy logic controller to improve the
dynamic performance of shunt active filter under varying load
conditions. The advantage of fuzzy control is that it is based on
defined linguistic rules and does not require any mathematical
model of the system unlike the other traditional controller. The
compensation process is based on source current sensing only,
an approach different from conventional methods. The
performance of fuzzy logic controller is compared with PI
controller under dynamic load conditions. Simulated studies
show that fuzzy controller is found suitable for steady state and
transient conditions of load.
Keywords- Power electronics, power quality, shunt active
filter, fuzzy logic controller, hysteresis-band, current controller.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The rapid use of power electronic controlled equipment

in electrical distribution system offers highly nonlinear
characteristics and produces voltage and current waveforms
distortions called as harmonics [1]. Some major problems
in electrical distribution system due to harmonics are well
enumerated in [2-6]. Distorted current and voltage
waveform further affects other consumers connected to the
same point of common coupling (PCC) by propagating
these distortions in their premises.
In order to overcome these power quality problems,
passive and active compensation (filters) approaches is
used. Passive compensation though simple approach for
achieving above goals but they are associated with several
drawbacks such as, resonance problems, bulky, tuned for
particular frequency component, component ageing, etc. [7],
[8]. For overcoming the drawbacks of passive filters and
reducing power quality problems, a number of attempts
have been made on the design, analysis and optimal control
development of active power filter (APF). APF allows
compensation of voltage harmonics (series APF),
compensation of current harmonics (shunt APF) with
reactive power compensation required by nonlinear load.
This paper emphasis on elimination of current harmonics
and reactive power compensation, hence shunt APF

978-1-4577-1386-611$26.002011 IEEE

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International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

between the conventional PI and proposed FLC are

presented. It is shown by the simulation results that
proposed controller based on fuzzy logic is robust that
conventional PI controller for steady-state and transient
conditions of load.
II.

iL (t ) =

sin (nt + n )

n =1

= I1 sin (t + f ) +

= iLf (t ) + iLh (t )

BASIC COMPENSATION PRINCIPLE

sin (nt + n )

(2)

n=2

where iLf and iLh are the fundamental and harmonic

component of load current. I1 and In are the peak values of
fundamental and harmonic component of load currents,
respectively. Hence for given supply voltage the
instantaneous power can be written as:
p L (t ) = v s (t ) iL (t )

Fig. 1 (a) shows the basic APF compensation scheme

including nonlinear loads with a three-phase supply system.
A current controlled VSI converter is used as an APF. APF
is controlled to supply / extract compensating current to /
from the utility (PCC). Fig. 1 (b) shows the different
waveform of load current, source current and compensating
current of one of the phase a.

= Vm I1 sin 2 t cos f + Vm I1 sin t cos t sin f

+ Vm sin t

I n sin(nt + n )

(3)

n=2

= pact (t ) + qreact. (t ) + ph (t )
where pact, qreact. and ph are active, reactive and harmonic
power of load. Out of these powers only first component
will be supplied by source. From (3), peak value of
fundamental component can be calculated as:
pact (t ) = Vm I1 sin 2 t cos f

= (Vm sin t ) ( I1 cos f ) sin t

(a)

(4)

=v s (t ) is (t )
where I sm = I1 cos f is the peak value of the supply

side current. In order to incorporate switching losses and

converter losses, additional loss component of current will
be supplied by source in addition to the real power of the
load. Hence, the total peak current supplied by supply
source can be written as:

I sm
= I sm + I sLoss

(b)
Figure 1. (a) Basic scheme of APF compensation (b) Different waveforms
of phase a load, source and compensating current

Conventionally, the actual capacitor voltage (Vdc) is

compared with a calculated reference value (Vdc,ref). The
error signal is then fed to a PI controller. The output of PI
controller is considered as peak value of supply current

( I sm
). The DC side capacitor mainly serve two purpose, (a)
it maintain DC bus voltage to set value with some steadystate error, and (b) in transient period it serves as energy
storage element to supply real power difference between
source and load. Finally, peak value of this source current
when multiplied with unit templates generated from supply
voltage will give three reference source currents.

A. Estimation of Reference current Supplied by source

The peak value of the reference source current
component is calculated by regulating DC link voltage of
VSI. Source only supplies active component of current and
rest of the component will be supplied by shunt APF for
power quality improvement. In addition to the active current
component source will also supplies loss component of
current. A PI regulator is normally used to maintain DC bus
voltage constant and the output of this PI controller is
considered as required value of active current component.
An experimental study of shunt APF (Gupta et al. 200x) has
shown that load current having fundamental and other
harmonic components which can be separated by Fourier
series. Let the source voltage and instantaneous source
current and load current can be written as [21]:

v s (t ) = Vm sin t
is (t ) = iL (t ) ic (t )

(5)

= I sm
u saf
isa

= I sm
u sbf
isb

(6)

= I sm
u scf
isc

III.

(1)

THE PROPOSED FUZZY CONTROLLER

Fuzzy logic becomes more popular due to dealing with

problems that have uncertainty, vagueness, parameter

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International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

have to consider while designing number of linguistic

variables in view of accuracy and complexity of FLC.

variation and especially where system model is complex or

not accurately defined in mathematical terms for the
designed control action. The conception of the fuzzy logic
introduced by Zadeh [16] is a combination of fuzzy set
theory and fuzzy inference system (FIS). Elements of a
fuzzy set belong to it with a certain degree, called degree of
membership. The degree of membership is a result of
mapping the input to certain rules using a membership
function (MF). The progression which maps the specified
input data to the output using fuzzy logic is known as fuzzy
inference. A fuzzy inference system can be classified as: (a)
fuzzification: which is the process of converting any crisp
value to analogous linguistic variable based on certain MF,
(b) inference engine: simulates human decision, (c)
knowledge base: consists MF definitions and necessary
rules like IF-THEN or it is combination of condition part
with their associated rules (d) defuzzification: is the
progression of transforming the fuzzy output into a crisp
numerical value. In this paper main control input variable is
the DC-link voltage error and output of FLC is the peak
value of the reference source current. The range of operating
current, normalization and de-normalization is one of the
important design factors of fuzzy controller. The block
diagram representation of fuzzy logic controller with
inference system is shown in Fig. 2. The scaling factor Ge,
Gce, and Gu are used to scaling the input and outputs as per
the designing of FLC.

(a) error e and change in error ce

(b) change in reference output current

Figure 3. Triangular shaped membership function used in fuzzification

The error e and change of error ce at nth sampling instant

are used as input of FLC and can be written as [14]:
e = Vdc,ref Vdc

A. Designing of control rules

Computational methods determine the computational
efficiency, processor memory requirement and processing
time. The fuzzy control rules based on membership function
defining or relate input variables to output variables. The
number and type of MF determines the computational
efficiency of fuzzy control technique. The determination of
MFs depends on the designers experience and knowledge.
The shape decision of MFs affects how well a fuzzy system
rules approximate a function.
Triangles or triangular membership function (TMF)
have been frequently used in several applications of FLC
[22], [23]. TMF are preferred due to simplicity, easy
implementation, symmetrical along the axis. Fig. 3 shows
the MFs relating input and output linguistic variables. The
number of linguistic variables is directly related to the
accuracy of approximating function and plays an important
role for input-output mapping [24]. However, some limits

ce(n) = e(n) e(n 1)

(7)

The output of FLC with limiter is considered as

). In this paper
amplitude of derived reference current ( I sm
seven triangular membership functions have been chosen for
representing numerical variables into linguistic variables
[15], viz., NL (negative large), NM (negative medium), NS
(negative small), ZE (zero), PS (positive small), PM
(positive medium), PL (positive large). The spacing between
MFs may be equal or unequal; it is set here for cover a band
of load current with good accuracy. After this rules
formation as knowledge base, different inference
mechanisms have been developed for defuzzify fuzzy rules.
In this paper, authors apply Mamdanis max-min inference
method to get an implied fuzzy set of tuning rules. Finally
center of mass method is used defuzzify the implied control
variables.

Figure 2. Detailed structure of fuzzy logic controller

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International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

-choice of the energy storage element parameters, a high dc

voltage Vdc, ameliorate the dynamics of the filter and
minimize the voltage ripple in the capacitor. As per the
specification of peak of dc ripple voltage and rated filter
current Ic,rated , the following relation can obtain for (Cdc):
I C ,rated
(8)
C dc =
3 Vdcr , p p

The above can be summarized as for implementing FLC:

(1) First, scaling factors consist of the normalization gain
for input and de-normalization gain is selected properly.
(2) Rules decision based on accuracy and complexity.
(3) Fuzzification, implication using mamdanis operator
and finally defuzzification to get desired output.
Fig. 4 shows the block diagram of the proposed FLC
scheme with shunt active filter. The designed rules for
knowledge base are shown in Table 1. The top row and left
column of the matrix indicate the fuzzy sets of the variables
e and ce.
TABLE I.

The value of Cdc depends on the maximum possible

variation in load and not on the steady state value of load
current. Hence, proper forecasting in the load variation
reduces the value of Cdc. Further, filter inductor can be
calculated as [26]:
maVdc,ref
(9)
Lc,min =
(2 2 ) I sw, p p K L f sw,max

FUZZY CONTROL RULE BASE

e
ce
NB

NB

NM

NS

PS

PM

PB

NVB

NVB

NVB

NB

NM

NS

NM

NVB

NVB

NB

NM

NS

PS

NS

NVB

NB

NM

NS

PS

PM

NB

NM

NS

PS

PM

PB

PS

NM

NS

PS

PM

PB

PVB

PM

NS

PS

PM

PB

PVB

PVB

PB

PS

PM

PB

PVB

PVB

PVB

V.

HYSTERESIS CURRENT CONTROLLER

Among different pulse width modulation (PWM)

techniques, hysteresis-band current control technique has
proven to be most suitable for generating switching pulses
for the switching device of VSI based active filter. It is
broadly used because of its ease and inherent-peak current
limiting capability without much information about system
parameters. The actual source currents are monitored
instantaneously, and then compared to the reference source
currents generated by the proposed fuzzy logic based
control algorithm. The positive group device and the
negative group device in one phase leg of VSI are switched
in complementary manner for avoiding a dead short circuit.
The switching logic for phase-a is formulated as

follows for hysteresis-band width (HB): if isa < (isa

HB ) ,
then upper switch is OFF and lower switch is ON in the

+ HB ) , then upper
phase a leg then Sa =1 ; if isa > (isa
switch is ON and lower switch is OFF in the phase a leg
then Sa=0.

IV. DESIGNING OF APF PARAMETERS

Mainly, selection of active power filter inductor (LC),
DC link capacitor (Cdc) and its reference value (Vdc,ref) are
the main parameters while designing the power circuit. The
output of the bridge is a PWM voltage that has to be filtered
by an inductance or a high order filter to limit the level of
ripple current. The APF filtering inductor is used to reduce
the ripple of VSI fed converter caused by the switching of
the power devices [9]. Hence, the design of filtering
inductor is based on principle of harmonic current reduction
technique [25]. On the dc side of the Shunt APF, capacitor
supplies the dc voltage Vdc.
The quality of distortion compensation is affected by the

Figure 4. Proposed fuzzy logic scheme based shunt active filter

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International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

transient due to accurate control of FLC block. The

variation of the dc capacitor voltage during the change in
load current can be observed from this figure. When the
load current is reduced or increased, capacitor voltage
increase or decrease to compensate for the real power
supplied by source. This change will be taken into account
by the FLC controller to adjust the peak value of reference
current.
Under varying load the desired response of the FLC and
APF system is reasonably fast and steady-state condition is
reached within few cycles of AC mains. THD of source
current is reduced from 26 % to 2.05 %, which shows a
significant reduction in THD. Supply currents are
sinusoidal, balanced and slightly leading with respect to
supply voltage which is necessary to compensate line
impedance drop.

Similarly, the switching pattern of rest of phases

devices can be derived using HB as the width of hysteresis
band.
VI.

SIMULATION RESULTS

To simulate the proposed FLC based control scheme

with reduced sensors, a model in MATLAB\ SIMULINKTM
and SimPowerSystem Blockset is developed. The complete
3-phase active filter system is composed using a supply
source, a voltage source inverter, coupling and smoothing
inductors with highly non-linear characteristic based load.
Various simulations are carried out to verify the
performance of the active power filter using proposed FLC
and conventional PI controller with during steady-sate and
transient conditions. The system parameters selected for
simulation studies are given in Table 2.
TABLE II.

SYSTEM PARAMETERS

System parameters
Supply voltage and frequency
Source impedance (Rs , Ls)
Filter impedance (Rc , Lc)
Smoothing inductor (Rsm , Lsm)
Load impedance (RL1, RL2, LL1, LL2)
Reference DC link voltage (Vdc,ref)
DC link capacitance (Cdc)
Switching frequency (fsw)

Values
230 V, 50Hz
0.05 , 0.5 mH
0.25 , 4 mH
0.5 , 1.5 mH
25 , 75 ,
10 mH, 15 mH
680 volts
1650 F
10-12 KHz
Figure 8. Transient response of fuzzy logic controlled shunt APF

Fig. 7 shows the performance results using fuzzy

controller of source voltage (VS), source, load and filter
current (IS, IL and IC) and DC side capacitor voltage (Vdc).
For the clarity purpose, only one phase filter current is
shown. The filter is switched on at 0.06 s.
Initially the three-phase load is 11-12 kW. The instant
the filter is switched on the source current becomes
sinusoidal having THD as per specified by IEEE standard
from the stepped wave shape. The THD in the load current
is 27%. THD of source current is reduced from 27 % to 2.36
%, which proves the effectiveness of proposed FLC.

The same MTALAB model of three phase shunt APF is

tested for conventional PI controller by replacing fuzzy
logic controller by PI controller. The value of proportional
and integral gains (Kp and Ki) are selected as 0.59 and 2.35,
respectively. Fig. 9 shows the performance results using
conventional PI controller of source voltage (VS), source,
load and filter current (IS, IL and IC) and DC side capacitor
voltage (Vdc).

Figure 9. Transient response of PI controlled shunt APF

Fig. 9 depicts that DC-link voltage rise at load change

instant is much slower using PI controller. Also, settling
time for transient case is also more as compared to FLC
controller. It is clear from simulation results that the
transient performance of supply current and DC-link voltage
is good for FLC as compared to PI controller. However,
THD performance for both FLC and PI are well with-in the
limits specified by IEEE 519 standards as shown in Table 3.

Figure 7. Switch-on response of system parameters based on FLC

To show the performance during transient condition load

is increased to 11 kW to 15 kW at t=0.12 s. Fig. 8 shows the
various system parameters waveform of the fuzzy logic
controlled shunt APF during load change. Fig. 8 shows that
there is smooth change in source current during this

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International Conference on Computer & Communication Technology (ICCCT)-2011

TABLE III.
Order of
harmonics
1
5
7
11
13
17
19
THD

HARMONIC SPECTRUM OF LOAD AND SOURCE CURRENT

FOR PI AND FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER
Load
current
THD
100
21.89
10.64
7.63
5.27
3.76
2.89
26.66 %

Source current
THD with PI
controller
100
1.1
.75
.64
.50
.39
.1
2.85 %

[11]

Source current
THD with Fuzzy
controller
100
.84
1.25
.85
.58
.27
.20
2.26 %

[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]

VII. CONCLUSION

[16]

A simple fuzzy logic based three-phase shunt active

power filter for current harmonic elimination and reactive
power compensation is presented in this paper. The
performance of fuzzy logic controlled shunt APF has been
studied and compared with the conventional PI controller.
The steady state performance is comparable to the PI
controller whereas transient response is found better than
the PI controller. The system has fast dynamic response for
varying load condition and harmonic spectrum is found well
below 5%, harmonic limit imposed by the IEEE-519
standard. The compensation process is simple with less
sensor count and is based on sensing source current only.
Experimentation of the proposed scheme using
TMS320F28335 floating point digital signal processor is in
process and will be reported in near future.

[17]
[18]
[19]

[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]

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