Current harmonics mitigation from grid connected variable speed wind turbine due to nonlinear loads using shunt active power filter

Abstract

The quality of power nowadays is of great concern due to increasing demand of supply and energy resources are limited, another cause is increasing penetration of nonlinear loads in the power system. In order to overcome energy supply challenges, the focus of technologists is shifting to the renewable energy side such as the wind and solar energy and so on. As such, mitigating effect of nonlinear loads have become ever important as well. In this context, various techniques have been used by researchers in past decades. Shunt active power filter (APF) have long been used to mitigate current harmonics from fixed wind turbine generator (WTG). In this study shunt APF has been applied with variable speed WTG using synchronous reference frame (SRF) for the extraction of compensation signal for APF. Gate driver signals are generated from Bang-Bang Controller (Hysteresis Band Current Controller HBCC). A MATLAB/SIMULINK based Model have been developed. The Simulation results show decreased THD levels of the system and clearly suggest the effectiveness of Shunt APF in meeting the IEEE-519 standard recommendation for harmonic levels in WTG.