A New Hybrid Active Power Filter Topology Enabling Low Voltage Switching Devices and Storage Capacitors.

Abstract

The increasing importance of mains harmonic content has been responsible for several improvements in Active Power Filter topologies in the last decade.

The pure multiple half-bridge configurations are now becoming replaced by new hybrid topologies, aiming to be simultaneously less bulky and expensive.

This new technique consists in reducing the voltages at the storage capacitors and consequently at the switching devices. This is achieved by introducing an extra filter between mains and the power electronics converter, tuned at the interest frequencies.

This paper presents a new topology for parallel hybrid active filters that can reduce the converter voltage down to 5% of the mains voltage magnitude.

A simple, comparative study will be presented, taking in consideration some topologies previously proposed by other authors.