Self-commissioning notch filter for active damping in three phase LCL-filter based grid converters

LCL-filters are used to mitigate the harmonic current content in grid converters. The LCL-filter resonance must be damped in order to avoid stability problems in the current control. Active damping avoids resistors at the expense of increased control complexity. Large grid impedance variations can challenge the LCL-filter stability. Active damping by using a notch filter on the reference voltage for the modulator is simple to implement and does not require additional sensors. With the notch frequency tuned for the resonant frequency the voltage reference does not contain any component susceptible of exciting the LCL-filter. However, the notch filter tuning requires considerable design effort and the variations in the resonance frequency limit the LCL-filter robustness. This paper proposes a simple tuning procedure for the notch filter that results in proper robustness. In order to cope with the grid inductance variations it is proposed to estimate the resonance frequency by means of Fourier analysis. The Goertzel algorithm, instead of the FFT, is used to reduce the calculation and memory requirements. Thus, the proposed self-commissioning notch filter results robust and consumes little computational resources. Finally, the analysis is validated with both simulation and experiments.