Power Quality Enhancement Using Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC) Controlled by Backstepping Controller

Abstract

Nowadays due to remarkable development in power electronics, the use of non-linear loads has become prominent. These loads draw distorted (non-sinusoidal) currents from the power supply (harmonics generation) resulting in an increase in harmonics injected into the power system. This article presents the Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC) for compensation voltages and current disturbances. Our dispositive study has dual benefits of series and shunts active filters as it improves the power quality. The approach consists in injecting harmonic current and voltage into the system with the same magnitude and inverse phase as the load current and voltage harmonics to cancel out the undesired harmonic components. In this article, we use a nonlinear controller called a backstepping controller for the DC bus. The results of simulations obtained under MATLAB/Simulink show the effectiveness of the controller used.