Power Factor Improvement of Single Phase AC-DC System Using Parallel Boost Converter

Abstract

The advent of controller integrated circuits has forced the development of new power factor correction techniques. A vast range of PFC circuits have been proposed with diverse operating modes to tackle the situation. These PFC circuits adjust the waveforms of the current in the input side so that maximum power can be tapped from the supplies. For every equipment the load should try to match a resistive one as closely as possible, only then the PF will be near to unity as there will be reduction of reactive power in the circuit. The current in this situation is free from all the lower as well as higher order harmonics thus copies the input voltage waveform or in other words it becomes in phase with it. So, this causes the current in the circuit to be at the lowest possible value to do the same work. As a result, the losses associated with circuit are reduced greatly. Hence the consumption in power is reduced greatly. This causes the price of distribution as well as generation to be lowered and hence improvement in the process. Since there are very less harmonics so the chances of interference with telecommunication devices are exponentially reduced. The strict regulatory enforcements has played a pivotal role in paving the way for these PFC circuits. Boost converter accomplishes this Active power-factor correction (ACMC) in discontinuous as well as in continuous modes. A good degree of accuracy is maintained in tracking the current program by average current. At first a simulation of single bridge converter without using any converter is performed. Then a current control circuit and a voltage control circuit were added to the boost converter which improved the input THD. Finally, the project concentrates on increasing the power factor by connecting two boost converters in parallel. In this method the current in one circuit has to keep up with the one in parallel to it.