AnLLCLPowerFilterforSingle PhaseGrid TiedInverter
AnLLCLPowerFilterforSingle PhaseGrid TiedInverter
2, FEBRUARY 2012
Abstract—This paper presents a new topology of higher order verters, respectively, was proposed to maximize the modulation
power filter for grid-tied voltage-source inverters, named the LLCL index and reduce the output power filter size. However, it makes
filter, which inserts a small inductor in the branch loop of the ca- the topologies or controls much more complex, leading to loss of
pacitor in the traditional LCL filter to compose a series resonant
circuit at the switching frequency. Particularly, it can attenuate the reliability. Furthermore, it is very difficult for a dual-mode time-
switching-frequency current ripple components much better than sharing type inverter to compensate the harmonics or generate
an LCL filter, leading to a decrease in the total inductance and reactive power for the grid.
volume. Furthermore, by decreasing the inductance of a grid-side The most common solution is to use a third-order LCL filter
inductor, it raises the characteristic resonance frequency, which instead of a first-order L filter [7]. Compared with the first-
is beneficial to the inverter system control. The parameter design
criteria of the proposed LLCL filter is also introduced. The compar- order L filter, the LCL filter can meet the grid interconnection
ative analysis and discussions regarding the traditional LCL filter standards with significantly smaller size and cost, especially
and the proposed LLCL filter have been presented and evaluated for applications above several kilowatts, but it might be more
through experiment on a 1.8-kW-single-phase grid-tied inverter difficult to keep the system stable [8]–[10]. Moreover, selecting
prototype. the parameters of an LCL filter is also a more complicated
Index Terms—Grid-tied voltage-source inverter, LCL fil- process in contrast to an L filter [11], [12]. Sometimes, it is
ter, LLCL filter, series resonant circuit, switching-frequency difficult to balance the factors of output current ripple sourced by
harmonics. insulated gate bipolar transistor switches, fundamental voltage
I. INTRODUCTION drop, volt ampere reactive limits, and the resonance frequency.
In this paper, a new high-order filter, named the LLCL filter, is
INCE renewable energy generation is gaining more and
S more attention, the grid-tied inverter has been widely
adopted [1]–[3]. A low-pass power filter is often inserted be-
proposed. Based on the traditional LCL filter, a small inductor is
inserted in the branch loop of the capacitor, composing a series
resonant circuit at the switching frequency. It can, particularly,
tween a voltage-source inverter (VSI) and the grid to limit the attenuate the switching-frequency current ripple components
excessive current harmonics, which are most often caused by much better than the LCL filter, saves the total inductance and
the sine pulsewidth modulation (PWM), to inject into the point thereby leads to size reduction.
of connection. First, the principle of the LCL filter to attenuate the harmonic
Due to the increasing price of copper, many measures have currents is given. Next, the proposed LLCL filter is described
been adopted to cut down the cost of the power filter. One and analyzed, and continued with an introduction on how to
effective way is to raise the switching frequency of the inverter design an LLCL filter. The experiments of the LCL and LLCL
where the solution certainly depends on the device techniques filters are carried out and compared.
and costs. For example, an SiC device can switch with a much
higher frequency than the same power ratio silicon device does,
II. PRINCIPLE OF THE TRADITIONAL LCL FILTER
but with a much higher price.
Another measure focuses on special topologies or controls. The equivalent circuit of an LCL-filter-based single-phase
In [4] a dual mode time-sharing inverter was introduced, trying grid-tied VSI is shown in Fig. 1. The inverter output voltage and
to utilize the good performance of the low-voltage device to current are represented as ui and i1 , and the grid voltage and
achieve higher switching frequency. In [5] and [6] dual-mode current are represented as ug and ig . The switching frequency
time-sharing control methods for single- and three-phase in- is represented as fs (in hertz) or ω s (in radians per second). It
is assumed that the power grid is an ideal voltage source, i.e.,
Manuscript received March 24, 2011; revised May 30, 2011 and June 25,
zero impedance, to supply a constant voltage at the fundamental
2011; accepted June 27, 2011. Date of current version January 9, 2012. This frequency of 50 or 60 Hz.
work was supported in part by the Leading Academic Discipline Project of When the single-phase full-bridge VSI is operated under the
Shanghai Municipal Education Commission under Award J50602 and in part
by the Qualified Technical Personnel Plan Project of Shanghai Science and
condition of unipolar, sine-triangle, and asymmetrical regular-
Technology Commission under Award 09QA1402500. Recommended for pub- sampled PWM, its output voltage ui (t) can be derived as [13]
lication by Associate Editor V. Staudt.
W. Wu is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Maritime ui (t) = αUdc cos(ωo t)
University, Shanghai 200135, China (e-mail: [email protected]).
Y. He is with FSP-Powerland Technology Inc., Nanjing 210042, China ∞
±∞
2Udc Jn (kπα) nπ
(e-mail: [email protected]). + sin cos(kωs t + nωo t)
F. Blaabjerg is with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg Univer- n =±1
kπ 2
k =1
sity, Aalborg DK-9220, Denmark (e-mail: [email protected]).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2011.2161337 (1)
Fig. 5. Bode plots of transfer functions in LCL and LLCL filters. (a) Bode plots of transfer functions i1 (s)/ui (s). (b) Bode plots of transfer functions ig (s)/ui (s).
ig (s) problems in the lower and higher parts of the harmonic
Gu i →i g (s) =
ui (s) u g (s)=0 spectrum.
Based on the aforementioned desired limits, the filter can be
Lf Cf s2 + 1 designed with the following seven-step design procedure.
= . (8)
(L1 L2 Cf + (L1 + L2 ) Lf Cf ) s3 + (L1 + L2 ) s 1) Choice of the tolerable current ripple on the inverter side
→ design of the inner inductor L1
If the inductance of Lf is set zero, then the transfer functions of
LCL filter can be also calculated. ΔI1 Udc
15% ≤ = ≤ 40% (9)
Fig. 5 shows the transfer functions i1 (s)/ui (s) and ig (s)/ui (s) Iref 4L1 fs Iref
of both LLCL filter and LCL filter while all the other parameters
where ΔI1 is the inverter-side current ripple and Iref is the
are the same except for Lf . It can be seen that within half of
rated reference peak current.
the switching frequency range, an LLCL-filter-based grid-tied
2) Choice of the reactive power absorbed in the rated condi-
VSI has almost the same frequency-response characteristic of
tion → capacitor value. Considering x as the percentage
an LCL filter. That is to say, compared with the LCL filter, the
of the reactive power absorbed in rated conditions
additional inductor Lf of the LLCL filter does not bring any
extra control difficulties. Furthermore, a smaller value of the Cf = xC (10)
grid-side inductor L2 of the LLCL filter could be beneficial to
widen the control bandwidth. and x is lower than 1. The upper capacitor value is limited
by the condition as
IV. PARAMETER DESIGN OF THE LLCL FILTER 5%Prated
C= (11)
A. Constraints and Procedure on the Power Filter Design Ug2 ωo
When designing the power filters (whether it is an LCL or where Prated is the rated power and Ug is the grid funda-
LLCL filter), some limits on the parameter values should be mental RMS voltage.
introduced, also discussed in [12] and [16]. 3) As far as an LLCL filter is concerned, L1 and Cf are chosen
1) The capacitor value Cf is limited to the decrease of the as the same with an LCL filter to meet the requirements
capacitive reactive power at rated load to less than 5%. of the inverter’s current ripple and the reactive power lim-
2) The upper limit to the total inductance (L1 + L2 ) depends itation, respectively. Since Lf –Cf circuit resonates at the
on the voltage drop during operation (lower than 10%). switching frequency, Lf can be taken as
3) The value of the inverter-side inductor L1 is limited to the 1
requirement of the ripple current (generally lower than = ωs . (12)
Lf Cf
40%).
4) IEEE 519-1992 recommends that harmonics higher than 4) For an LCL filter, L2 mainly depends on the objective to
the 35th should be limited. For a grid-tied inverter system, attenuate each harmonic around the switching frequency
if the short-circuit current of power system is lower than down to 0.3%, which can be described using (13) as shown
20 times the nominal grid-side fundamental current, then at the bottom of the next page, where J1 (πα) and J3 (πα)
each harmonic current of higher than the 35th should be are the integrals of the Bessel function corresponding to
less than 0.3% of the rated fundamental current. the sideband harmonics at the frequency of (ω s +ω 0 ) and
5) The resonance frequency fr or ω r should be in a range (ω s +3ω 0 ).
between ten times the line frequency and one half of For an LLCL filter, owing to the Lf –Cf resonate circuit, the
the switching frequency in order to not create resonance current harmonics around the switching frequency satisfy
WU et al.: LLCL POWER FILTER FOR SINGLE-PHASE GRID-TIED INVERTER 785
(2Udc /π) × max (|J1 (πα)| , |J3 (πα)|) × Gu i →i g (jωs )L f =0
≤ 0.3% (13)
Iref
(Udc /π) × max (|J1 (2πα)| , |J3 (2πα)| , |J5 (2πα)|) × Gu i →i g (j2ωs )
≤ 0.3% (14)
Iref
ig (s) Lf Cf s2 + Rf Cf s + 1
Gu i →i g (s) = = (18)
ui (s) u g (s)=0 (L1 L2 Cf + (L1 + L2 ) Lf Cf ) s3 + (L1 + L2 ) Rf Cf s2 + (L1 + L2 ) s
786 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE II
VALUES OF FILTERS IN EXPERIMENTS
TABLE I
CURRENT HARMONICS WITH DIFFERENT Lf
D. Design Example Fig. 8. Bode plots of transfer functions from ui to ig for the LCL and LLCL
filters.
A step-by-step procedure to obtain some values for the pa-
rameters of the filter under the condition of fs = 20 kHz,
Udc = 350 V, Ug = 220 V/50 Hz and Prated = 1.8 kW, ΔI1 =
31.54%Iref (so the base impedance is 26.89 Ω, and the upper-
limit base capacitance C is 5.92 μF) and being with the unipolar
modulation is done as the following.
1) Adopting the 1.4% impedance for the inverter-side induc-
tor L1 , a 31.54% current ripple can be obtained. Finally,
the inverter-side inductor is selected to be 1.2 mH.
2) The capacitor value is designed to 2 μF to limit the reactive
power to 1.69%. If some of the constraints cannot be met,
it should be increased until the limit of 5%. Then, the
inductor value of Lf in the Lf –Cf series resonant circuit Fig. 9. Prototype system configuration.
can also be calculated.
3) The grid-side inductor value of L2 is easy to calculate by
(13) and (14). For an LCL filter, the grid-side inductor L2 5) The Lf –Cf series resonant circuit quality factor is chosen
should be selected to be equal to the inverter-side inductor to 20, and the equivalent resistor value of Rf is 0.2 Ω.
or smaller for stability reasons [17], [18]. In this paper, L2 6) To ensure that every current harmonic (>=35th) is lower
is selected to be 1.2 mH for the LCL filter, and 0.22 mH than 0.3% of the fundamental current when assumed that
for the LLCL filter. the parameter drift of Lf is in a range of ±20%, it is
4) The consequent resonance frequency is, respectively, necessary to analyze the ripple current harmonics both at
4.60 kHz for the LCL filter and 7.67 kHz for the LLCL the switching frequency and at the double of the switching
filter, which is exactly lower than one half of the switch- frequency while Lf changes ±20%, as shown in Fig. 7 and
ing frequency. listed in Table I.
WU et al.: LLCL POWER FILTER FOR SINGLE-PHASE GRID-TIED INVERTER 787
Fig. 10. Experimental waveforms with LCL filter in Case I. (a) Grid voltage and grid-side current waveforms. (b) Power spectrum of grid-side current.
Fig. 11. Experimental waveforms with LCL filter in Case II. (a) Grid voltage and grid-side current waveforms. (b) Power spectrum of grid-side current.
The designed parameters of the filters are listed in Table II, 0.22 mH, as shown in Fig. 11. Case III is the LLCL filter strategy,
and the grid-side current ripple reduction at the switching fre- as shown in Fig. 12.
quency and the double one is shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that The measured total harmonic distortion (THD)% of ig in
the designed LLCL filter has better attenuating effects on the har- Cases I, II, and III are listed in Table III, which shows that the
monics than the LCL filter around the switching frequency, but grid-side current in Case III has the lowest THD (1.9%). The
just the opposite around the double of the switching frequency. spectra of the grid-side current in the three cases are shown,
respectively, in Figs. 10(b), 11(b), and 12(b). And the measured
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS dominant sideband current harmonics, marked as percentage of
the amplitude of the fundamental current, are listed in Table III.
To confirm the theoretical analysis further, a 1.8-kW proto-
type based on DSP (TMS320LF2407A) controller is constructed
and the circuit configuration is shown in Fig. 9. The parameters
of filters are listed in Table II, and the performance evaluations B. Analysis and Discussion
of the inverter with LLCL filter will be evaluated and investi-
gated under the given conditions of fs = 20 kHz, Udc = 350 V, From the experiment results, the following can be seen.
Ug = 220 V/50 Hz, Prated = 1.8 kW, the grid impedance Zg = 1) The dominating harmonics current appears around 20 kHz
0, and the dead time td = 2 μs. A programmable ac source in Cases I and II, while the dominating harmonics current
(Chroma 6530) is used to simulate the grid voltage. appears around 40 kHz in Case III. This is the same as the
theoretical analysis.
2) In Case I, the dominating harmonic current slightly ex-
A. Experimental Results ceeds the recommendation of IEEE 519-1992 in the ex-
Referring to the design procedure developed in Section IV, periment, while the dominating harmonic current can meet
experimental analysis of three cases is carried out. Figs. 10–12 the recommendation of IEEE 519-1992 in Case III.
show the experimental currents and the spectra of three cases, 3) The value of the grid-side inductor of the LLCL filter is
respectively. Case I is the LCL filter strategy with L2 = 1.2 mH, reduced by a factor of 81.67%, compared to that of the LCL
as shown in Fig. 10. Case II is the LCL filter strategy with L2 = filter. This is almost the same as the theoretical analysis.
788 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. Experimental waveforms with LLCL filter in Case III. (a) Grid voltage and grid-side current waveforms. (b) Power spectrum of grid-side current.
[16] M. Liserre, F. Blaabjerg, and A. Dell’Aquila, “Step-by-step design pro- Frede Blaabjerg (F’03) was with ABB-Scandia,
cedure for a grid-connected three-phase PWM voltage source converter,” Randers, from 1987 to 1988. During 1988–1992, he
Int. J. Electron., vol. 91, no. 8, pp. 445–460, Aug. 2004. was a Ph.D. student at Aalborg University, Aalborg,
[17] Y. Lang, D. Xu, S. R. Hadianamrei, and H. Ma, “A novel design method of Denmark, where he became an Assistant Professor
LCL type utility interface for three-phase voltage source rectifier,” in Proc. in 1992, an Associate Professor in 1996, and a Full
IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf., Recife, Brazil, 2005, pp. 313–317. Professor in 1998 in power electronics and drives. In
[18] B. Bolsens, K. De Brabendere, J. Van den Keybus, J. Driesen, and R. Bel- 2000, he was a Visiting professor in the University of
mans, “Model-based generation of low distortion currents in grid-coupled Padova, Padova, Italy, as well as a part-time program
PWM-inverters using an LCL output filter,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., Research Leader at Research Center Risoe, Roskilde,
vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 1032–1040, Jan. 2006. in wind turbines. From 2006 to 2010, he was the Dean
[19] J. K. Phipps, “A transfer function approach to harmonic filter design,” of the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Medicine
IEEE Ind. Appl. Mag., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 68–82, Mar./Apr. 1997. at Aalborg University. In 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Curtin Univer-
sity of Technology, Perth, Australia, as well as a Visiting Professor at Zhejiang
University, China, in 2009. He has been involved in many research projects
Weimin Wu received the B.S. degree from the De- with the industry. He is the author or coauthor of more than 600 publications
partment of Electrical Engineering, Anhui Univer- in his research fields including the book “Control in Power Electronics” (M.P.
sity of Science and Technology, Huainan, China, in Kazmierkowski, R. Krishnan, F. Blaabjerg, Eds. New York: Academic, 2002).
1997, the M.S. degree from the Department of Elec- His research interests include power electronics, static power converters, ac
trical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, drives, switched reluctance drives, modeling, characterization of power semi-
China, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree from the Col- conductor devices and simulation, power quality, wind turbines, custom power
lege of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, systems, and green power inverter.
Hangzhou, China, in 2005. Dr. Blaabjerg is a member of the European Power Electronics and Drives
From July 2005 to June 2006, he was a Research Association and the IEEE Industry Applications Society Industrial Drives Com-
Engineer at Delta Power Electronic Center, Shang- mittee. He is also a member of the Industry Power Converter Committee and the
hai. Since July 2006, he has been a Faculty Member Power Electronics Devices and Components Committee in the IEEE Industry
at Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, where he is currently an Associate Application Society. He has been an Associated Editor of the IEEE TRANS-
Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. From September 2008 ACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELEC-
to March 2009, he was a Visiting Professor at the Center for Power Electronics TRONICS, Journal of Power Electronics, and the Danish Journal Elteknik. Since
Systems, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg. He 2006, he has been an Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER
has coauthored more than 30 papers in technical journals and conferences. He ELECTRONICS and was a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics
is the holder of three patents. His research interests include power converters Society from 2005 to 2007. Later, he became a Distinguished Lecturer for the
for renewable energy systems, power quality, smart grid, and energy storage IEEE Industry Applications Society from 2010 to 2011. He received the 1995
technology. Angelos Award for his contribution in modulation technique and control of
electric drives, and an Annual Teacher prize at Aalborg University in 1995. In
1998, he received the Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award
from the IEEE Power Electronics Society. He has received nine IEEE Prize
Yuanbin He was born in Fujian Province, China, in paper awards during the last ten years (the last in 2008) and another prize paper
1985. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from award at PELINCEC, Poland, in 2005. He received the IEEE Power Electronics
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Society Distinguished Service Award in 2009 as well as the European Power
Maritime University, Shanghai, China, in 2009 and Electronics and Drives Association Power Electronics and Motion Control 2010
2011, respectively. Council Award for his contributions in power electronics. In 2002 he received
He is currently at FSP-Powerland Technology, the C.Y. O’Connor Fellowship from Perth, Australia, in 2003 the Statoil prize
Inc., Nanjing, China. His current research interests for his contributions in power electronics, in 2004 the Grundfos Prize in ac-
include digital control technique and renewable en- knowledgment of his international scientific research in power electronics, and
ergy generation system. the Director Ib Henriksens Research Prize in acknowledgment of high-level
international research in power electronics.