Active Power Line Conditioner based on Modular Multilevel Cascade Converter - Double-Star Chopper-Cells

In this paper an Active Power Line Conditioner (APLC) is proposed based on a Modular Multilevel Cascade Converter (MMCC) - Double Star Chopper Cells (DSCC) topology. A higher-voltage, low-switching frequency IGBT converter is used to achieve harmonic minimization. Compared to the conventional APLC topology, the proposed approach employs lower DC-link voltage, lower voltage in the power devices, flexible output voltage level, fault protection, less prone to noise, loss reduction, among others features considered in this work. Experimental results show that the proposed active power filter topology is capable of minimizing load harmonics and compensating reactive power at the Point of Commom Coupling (PCC).