Power Factor and Power Factor Correction
One type of power factor correction (PFC) involves passive correction,
where the reactive power of a system is compensated by adding a
component that will use an equal but opposite amount of reactive power.
For example, if a load is inductive with a reactive power of 1.754 kVAR, then
the system would require a capacitive load with a reactive power of 1.754
kVAR to oppose the inductance.
One way to implement this kind of power factor correction is to have a
large bank of capacitors that can be switched into the circuit when needed.
This type of power factor correction works well for linear loads on large
scales where the cost of the power factor correction system can be
absorbed by the size and cost of the overall system.
On much smaller scales—for example, individual power supplies—power
factor is also important. It's important not because any individual power
supply has a large effect on the system, but because there are so many
power supplies. Even more challenging is the fact that these power supplies
are non-linear loads, so the power factor cannot be corrected by simply
adding reactive components (i.e., capacitors or inductors).
To ensure that electronic devices do not have a significant cumulative effect
on the power factor of the grid, international standards such as EN61000-3-
2 and Energy Star 80 Plus set limits on the power-factor degradation and
harmonic distortion introduced by power supplies.
A previous article showed that simple passive filters are not enough to
adequately improve the power factor or harmonic distortion. Instead, we
must use an active power factor circuit that forces the AC current to track
the AC voltage.
The Boost Power Factor Correction Converter
One of the most common active PFC circuits is called the boost PFC
converter, which is a relatively simple and low-cost circuit. The only extra
components that are required beyond the ones used in a linear AC-DC
converter are a switch (usually a FET), a diode, and an inductor.
Figure 1 below shows a boost PFC converter. You can see that it is
essentially a linear power supply with a boost converter inserted between
the rectifier and the filter capacitor.
Figure 1. Boost PFC converter circuit
The general goal of the boost PFC converter is to turn the switch (S ) off
1
and on rapidly and with a varying duty cycle in order to make the input
current (i ) sinusoidal and in phase with the input voltage (v ).
ac ac
Boost PFC Converter Operation
The boost PFC circuit cycles rapidly between two states. The first state
occurs when S is closed, as shown in Figure 2. When in this state, the
1
inductor is being energized by the AC side of the circuit via the rectifier,
and thus the inductor current will be increasing. At the same time, diode
D becomes reverse biased (because its anode is connected to ground
pfc
through S ), and energy is provided to the load by the capacitor.
1
Figure 2. Boost PFC converter with the switch (S1) closed
Figure 3 shows the second state, which occurs when S is open. In this state,
1
the inductor de-energizes (the current decreases) as it supplies energy to
the load and for recharging the capacitor.
Figure 3. Boost PFC converter with the switch (S1) open
(Note that both Figure 2 and Figure 3 show only the positive half of the
input voltage cycle. The negative half would be identical except that current
would be flowing through the other two diodes of the rectifier.)
The cycling between the two states is done at a high frequency that is at
least in the tens of kHz, but is often an order of magnitude (or even more)
higher than that. The cycling back and forth between states is done rapidly
and in a manner that both maintains a constant output voltage and
controls the average inductor current (and subsequently the average AC
current).
Since the inductor current is increasing in state 1 and decreasing in state 2,
the duty cycle determines the amount of time the inductor current
increases versus the amount of time the inductor current decreases. Thus,
by varying the duty cycle, the average inductor current can be adjusted. By
making this average current track the expected current, you can get a
significant improvement in power factor and total harmonic distortion
(THD).
For an ideal system, the expected inductor current would be a rectified sine
wave and the expected AC input current would be a sine wave. Because of
the switching nature of the system and the difficulty in obtaining perfect
tracking of the expected current, the AC input current (I ) will not be an
ac
ideal sine wave and the inductor current (I ) will not be an ideal rectified
(L)
sine wave, but will instead look something like this:
Figure 4. AC current and inductor current of a boost PFC converter
These currents are the general shape that they should be (sinusoid/rectified
sinusoid), but one thing that stands out is that the lines of the signals look
thick. This thickness occurs because during one cycle the current ramps up
and then ramps down as the average current is controlled to track the
reference sinusoidal voltage.
Zooming in on the inductor current reveals the repeatedly increasing and
decreasing currents of the inductor as the system switches between the two
states.
Figure 5. Zoomed-in view of the inductor current in a boost PFC converter
