A New Unified Power Quality Conditioner based on Trans-Z-Source Inverter

Unified Power quality conditioner (UPQC) consists of back to back voltage source inverters. In UPQC combination of parallel and series active power filters are used to compensate for the nonlinear load current harmonics and voltage distortions, simultaneously. For appropriate performance of both converters and bidirectional power flow, the DC link voltage should be at least 1.41 times larger than the line to line voltage in the high voltage part of the system; i.e. the parallel active filter. One of the determining factors for the cost of semiconductors is the maximum tolerable voltage stress. The voltage stress of the series converter increases when the DC link voltage is high. In order to overcome this deficiency, a Z-source network is added to the common structure of back to back invertors in the UPQC. It will reduce the applied DC voltage to the series active power filters significantly and decrease the cost of manufacturing. In this structure, an impedance source network is used in an AC/DC inverter to produce a buck-boost effect. Additionally, dead time has been eliminated through the use of a Z source network in the parallel active filter and thus its performance and reliability has increased impressively. In this paper, a comparison study has been conducted through necessary simulations for the performance evaluation of the common and proposed structures. The total switching device power has been used as a criteria to confirm the manufacturing cost reduction in the proposed structure.