International Journal of Research in Advanced Engineering and Technology 

International Journal of Research in Advanced Engineering and Technology

ISSN: 2455-0876; Impact Factor: RJIF 5.44
www.engineeringresearchjournal.com
Volume 2; Issue 3; May 2016; Page No. 52-56

Control of buck-boost chopper type AC voltage regulator

1
Alfoni Jose K, 2 Anusha N, 3 Govind Rao S, 4 Venkatesh T, 5 Poli Naidu CH
1
Asst. Prof., Dept. of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Lendi Institute of Engineering & Technology, Andhra Pradesh, India.
2, 3, 4, 5
Student, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Lendi Engineering College, Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract
Traditional AC voltage regulator used servo-motor position regulation or thyristor phase controlled method which had low
dynamic response speed or large amount of harmonic components. However, these drawbacks can be overcome by using Pulse
Width Modulation chopper techniques in AC voltage regulation. Buck-Boost Chopper type AC voltage regulator, derived from the
DC chopper modulated method, is a kind of direct AC-AC voltage converter and has many advantages: such as fast response
speed, low harmonics and high power factor. It adopts high switching frequency AC chopper techniques and can do wide range
step less AC voltage regulation. The steady-state equivalent circuit of the Buck-Boost chopper type AC voltage regulator, as well
as the theoretical analysis method of the input power factor and the output voltage is presented in this paper. In addition, in order
to solve the problems caused by the sags or swells of the input voltage, the output voltage controller is designed. The proposed
voltage controller uses output peak voltage as feedback signal and adopts PI control strategy to regulate the output voltage. Digital
simulation results coincide with the theoretical analysis and show that the Buck-Boost chopper type voltage regulator has a unit
input power factor and that the designed voltage controller can stabilize the output voltage with fast dynamic speed when input
voltage fluctuations occur.

Keywords: AC chopper, Voltage Regulator, Pulse Width Modulation, Feed forward and Feedback Control, Power Factor,
Voltage Fluctuations

1. Introduction previously presented papers. Different working principles

AC voltage regulation is an important part of power conversion. have also been presented to ensure the safety of the converter.
There are some types of AC /AC converter to regulate the input The switching patterns are critical and an alternate path has to
voltage to a lower or higher output voltage. A winding be established in dead time. DC regenerative snubber
transformer is widely used in voltage regulation fields such as capacitor is used to realize the safe commutation and enhance
power system, motor speed control and so on. However, because efficiency. Although there are various researches that focus on
the winding ratio is changed by servomotor or by manual the topology of the AC chopper converter, little attention has
regulation, it has low regulation speed. There are also other been given to the theoretical analysis of the input power
researches, which use thyristor phase controlled circuit to do factor. In addition, because most of the previous proposed
voltage regulation. These converters have been widely used as a control methods are open loop control, voltage regulation
soft-starter and a speed regulator of pumps and fans. Although it performance is restrained. To solve the problems caused by
has a higher regulating speed than winding transformer, the low the input voltage fluctuation, the output voltage closed loop
input power factor and the large amount of the low-order feedback control system is proposed for a better dynamic
harmonic current are the major problems. The size of the passive performance. The remainder of this paper is divided into four
filter becomes larger. Furthermore, these shortcomings affect the sections. First, the circuit description and working principles
power quality. The reactive and harmonic currents generated by are discussed in section II. Then, the theoretical analysis
the thyristor commutation also produce extra power loss on the method of the input power factor and output voltage are
transmission lines. presented is section III. Based on the theoretical analysis, the
Using high switching frequency AC chopper can solve these output voltage controller design is shown in section IV.
problems. A Chopper type voltage transformer adopts PWM Digital simulation is conducted in section V to the proposed
control techniques and the above problems are improved when it analysis method and the voltage controller performance. This
is operated in chopping mode. The input voltage is chopped into paper ends with concluding remarks.
segments and changing the duty ratio of the control signal
regulates the output voltage. The advantages are nearly 2. Circuit Configuration and Principle of Operation
sinusoidal input-output currents voltage waveforms, improved The basic circuit configuration of the proposed converter is
power factor, reduced harmonic current, a fast response speed shown in Fig.1. This circuit has the following characteristics:
and a smaller input filter size. It can protect sensitive equipment it can operate directly from the single-phase line and regulate
such as computer or communication equipment; it can also be the output voltage higher or lower steplessly. Furthermore, the
used to solve power quality problems caused by line voltage input voltage phase synchronous circuit is unnecessary in this
sags and swells. scheme. As a result, the circuit is simplified and the cost is
In order to reduce the power loss, researches have been reduced. The input filter, consisting of inductor Li and
conducted to reduce the number of the switching devices. Three capacitor Ci, absorbs the harmonic currents. The switches S1
switches and four switches AC chopper were discussed in and S2 are bi-directional. The used bi-directional switch
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International Journal of Research in Advanced Engineering and Technology 

module is composed of two insulated gate bipolar transistors 3. Analysis

(IGBT). This bi-directional switch structure make the two IGBT To facilitate the analytical procedure, the following
share the common the driver circuit, thus the circuit hardware assumptions are made: First, all components are assumed
design is simplified. The used IGBT has inner anti-parallel ideal. In addition, because the switching frequency fS is much
diode, which provide freewheeling currents path when the higher than the line frequency f, the high frequency input
reverse voltage is encountered. The inductor L is used to store harmonic currents can be absorbed by small input filter. The
and transfer the energy to the output side. The switch S1 is used input power factor is assumed not to be affected by the input
periodically to connect and disconnect the inductor L to the filter. In switching period, the input voltage ui and the output
supply, i.e., it regulates the power delivered to the inductor L. voltage uo are considered to be constant. When ui >0, the
The switch S2 provides a freewheeling path for the inductor waveforms of inductor voltage uL and current iL are shown in
current to discharge the stored energy of the inductance L when Fig.3. The inductor voltage uL is ui during the active mode, or
the switch S1 is turned off. These switches are controlled by – uo during the freewheeling mode. In dead-time mode, the
PWM signals with constant duty ratio. C1, C2 and R1, R2 are the inductor voltage uL is ui or - uo according to the direction of iL.
snubber capacitors and resistors respectively. The snubber
circuits are connected in parallel with the bi-directional
switches. The output filter capacitor C0 reduces the output
voltage ripple.

Fig 3: Waveforms of the inductor voltage and current

Fig 1: Buck-Boost chopper type AC voltage regulator In ideal condition, the inductor voltage of uL can be expressed

The switches S1 and S2 work in complementary mode. The

switching pattern of the control signals is shown in Fig.2.The
operation is divided into three modes: active mode, freewheeling In the average model, the average inductor voltage during one
mode and dead-time mode. The active mode is defined when the switching period can be given by:
switch S1 is turned on. During the active mode, the inductor
current is forced to flow through the voltage source via the … (1)
modulated switch S1 during its on-state periods and the inductor Where (t) and (t) are the average AC input voltage and
storages the energy. The freewheeling mode is defined when the output voltage during the switching period, respectively, and
modulated switch S1 is turned off. The inductor current paths D is the duty ratio. Because the switching frequency is much
can be formed by the direction of the load current. In higher than the line frequency, it is possible to approximately
freewheeling mode, the load current freewheels and the inductor give the average inductor voltage as follows:
L discharges the energy through the switch S2 with the help of its
body diodes according to the direction of the load current.
Finally, the dead-time mode is defined when the switches S1 and … (2)
S2 are both turned off. The dead-time td shown in Fig.2 is short, Where is the average inductor current during the
only about several microseconds. The snubber circuits can switching period? The inductor current produces the output
absorb the bidirectional turn-off spike energy due to line stray current during the freewheeling mode, and the inductor
inductance. current is caused by the input current during the active mode.
Hence, the following relations are obtained:

… (3)
… (4)
Where ii (t) and io (t) are the average input and output current
Respectively. From (1) and (2), the following equation is
Obtained.
D (t) = L + (1-D) (t) … (5)
Substituting (3) in (5), yields

Fig 2: Switching patterns of the PWM signals (t) = + (t) … (6)

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International Journal of Research in Advanced Engineering and Technology 

Equation (6) represents the steady-state equivalent circuit for the The controller input is expressed as:
chopper type voltage regulator. The equivalent circuit is shown
in Fig.4. = -
The controller output is duty ratio D. When the input voltage
fluctuation happens, the detected output peak-voltage uf needs
to be regulated to a constant reference value ur with fast
response speed. The proportional-integral (PI) controller
satisfying these performance requirements is used as follows:

D= + dt

Fig 4: steady state equivalent circuit of Buck-Boost chopper type Where and are proportional and integral gains
voltage regulator respectively. The integral part of the designed controller
makes the steady-state output voltage error zero.
Where Z0 is the equivalent resistance of load R in parallel with
the output filter capacitor C0. Let 5. Simulation Experiment
To show the feasibility of the proposed analysis method and
control strategy, the simulation model of the proposed voltage
Z= +j … (7)
regulator is setup using Matlab/Simulink software. When the
Where Z is the total impedance of the equivalent circuit and is load is pure resistive RL=100 and the duty ratio D=0.4, the
the angular frequency of the line voltage. According to the waveforms of the input voltage, input current, output voltage,
Kirchhoff’s laws, the input current is: output current and inductor current are shown in Fig.7.
+
= … (8)
And the output voltage is

=- … (9)
The input power factor angle of the converter is:

= arc tg( ) = arc tg ( ) … (10)

4. Voltage Controller
Voltage sags or swells are caused by the disturbances or faults in
power systems. The input voltage fluctuation also affects the
output voltage. From (9) the output voltage can be regulated by
the duty ratio of the PWM control signals. The voltage Fig 7: Waveforms of input voltage, input current, output voltage,
controller, which uses the output peak-voltage as the feedback output current and inductor current when D=0.4
signal, is designed to keep the stability of the output voltage in
case of input voltage fluctuation. The peak-voltage detector and The input current is almost in phase with the input voltage.
control system structure diagram is shown in Fig.5. Unlike the thyristor phase controlled converter, the output
voltage wave is sinusoidal and the harmonics are highly
reduced. With duty ratio ranging from 0.2 to 0.7, the
simulation results of input power factor are shown in Fig.8.)
And simulation results of output voltage root-mean- square
(rms) value are shown in Fig.9.

Fig 5: The peak-voltage detector and control system

Where uf is the detected output peak-voltage and ur is the

reference value of output peak-voltage. The circuit detects the
output peak-voltage with diodes rectifier, capacitor and resistor.
When the input voltage decreases, the capacitor discharges
through the resistor, and when increased, the capacitor is
charged directly.
Fig 8: Variation of input power factor under different duty ratio
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International Journal of Research in Advanced Engineering and Technology 

Fig 11: Spectrum analysis of the output voltage

Fig 9: Variation of output voltage under different duty ratio 6. Conclusion

The Buck-Boost chopper type AC voltage regulator has many
According to the diagram, the simulation results are consistent advantages compared to the winding transformer and thyristor
with the theoretical analysis. The chopper type AC voltage phase controlled voltage regulator. The analysis method of the
regulator has a high input power factor and can reach the unit input power factor and the output voltage is presented. The
power factor in working zone. Fig.10 shows the simulation simulation results coincide with the theoretical analysis and
results of the output voltage when voltage sags or swells of 20% show that the chopper type voltage regulator has a unit input
in the input voltage occur. The voltage controller can regulate power factor, and that the output voltage can be regulated
the output voltage and suppress the voltage fluctuation with fast higher or lower steplessly. Compared with other plans, the
speed. According to Fig.11, when the output peak voltage is input current is in a sinusoidal waveform with less harmonic
100V, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of output voltage is components. The output voltage control system is designed
only 1.62%. The output voltage has little harmonic components. using PI control method and the peak-voltage detector. The
simulation results show that the voltage controller has a good
dynamic performance when input voltage swells or sags
occur. The Buck-Boost chopper type AC voltage regulator
can improve the PF and reduce the power loss caused by the
reactive and harmonic currents. In addition, it has significant
meaning in protecting the voltage sensitive load against the
line voltage swells and wags.

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13. Corresponding author: Tang Hou-jun, E-mail:
[email protected] 1023

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