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Power quality in electrical systems is a basic requirement that should be guaranteed. Nonetheless, the increase of power-electronics-based applications and other nonlinear loads have induced harmonic distortion degrading the power quality; therefore, effective methods to measure and suppress such distortion need to be developed. The main contributions of this article are the following: the development of a novel fast-converging optimal estimator to determine online the harmonic components of a time-varying signal, which can be used for analysis and control purposes; the usage of the estimator to generate reference signals for an optimal control system in order to suppress the harmonics components; and the experimental validation of the proposed methodology as a feasible solution for industrial applications. The proposal considers practical assumptions such as the signal to be analyzed is corrupted with noise and contains time-varying harmonics (i.e., no steady-state condition is assumed). As an application of the harmonic estimator, the following two experimental tests are carried out: first, the optimal determination of the harmonic components of the current waveform in a nonlinear load, and second, the usage of harmonics information to mitigate them through of an active power filter, which is controlled by using an optimal trajectory tracking control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the capability of pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming operation added to the high-power factor-integrated buck-flyback converter (IBFC), which was developed in previous works for LED lighting applications. First, the two main dimming techniques will be introduced, namely, analog dimming and PWM dimming. Then, the three main PWM dimming schemes found in the literature, that is, enable dimming, series dimming, and parallel dimming, will be briefly discussed. Afterwards, the IBFC topology will be tested performing both analog and enable dimming. In addition, a new proposal is introduced: the high-frequency series PWM dimming technique, which overcomes all the challenges faced when developing PWM dimming capabilities in low slew-rate constant-current fixed-frequency-controlled converters and offers all the advantages of PWM dimming over analog dimming while maintaining good efficiency. The proposed dimming-technique control loop, as well as the laboratory tests, will be presented, discussed, and compared to analog dimming and PWM dimming, showing satisfactory results in terms of dimming ratio, input current total harmonic distortion (\THDI), and power factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high rise in luminous efficiency that high-brightness light-emitting diodes (HB-LEDs) have experienced in recent years, many new applications have been researched. This paper covers a streetlight LED application using the offline integrated buck–flyback converter (IBFC) developed in previous works. In this application, the converter is used to provide power-factor correction from a universal ac source. A control loop using the LM3524 IC has been implemented for testing the feasibility of Enabling pulsewidth modulation dimming mode. First, the LED load has been linearized and modeled in order to calculate the IBFC topology properly. Second, the converter has been designed and tested at the laboratory. The converter has also been modeled in order to design a fixed-frequency constant-current control. The dynamics of all the stages involved in the closed loop have been taken into account in order to develop an adequate controller. Finally, the experimental results obtained from the laboratory tests are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new control method for electronic ballasts based on the use of a variable inductor is presented. The main goal is to perform the complete control of the electronic ballast by maintaining the switching frequency constant and without using other parameters of the power converter, such as input voltage or duty cycle. The magnetic regulator is controlled by means of a dc current, which allows performing both lamp soft starting and lamp dimming. Apart from the important advantage of keeping a constant frequency during full electronic ballast operation, the proposed method presents additional advantages when compared to other control methods, such as inherent isolated control, more linear control characteristics, constant electrode power, and higher efficiency. Experimental results from a 36-W linear fluorescent lamp prototype are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a new solution to implement and control a single-stage electronic ballast based on the integration of a buck-boost power-factor-correction stage and a half-bridge resonant inverter. High power factor; Self-oscillating control; Single-stage converter.