Design of green hydrogen-based shunt active power filter for distribution networks using a modified red-tailed hawk algorithm

In the modern world, renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly important. Power quality (PQ) issues may arise, if these sources are incorporated in distribution system via power electronic equipment. This study handles PQ problems by considering a cascaded H-Bridge 5level converter-based shunt active power filter (SHAPF) integrated with a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), Hydrogen Fuel Cell (HFC) and a Solar Energy System (SES) to the DC bus. The solar power is utilized to generate hydrogen, which is supplied to HFC to generate power. Here, A new modified red-tailed hawk (RTH) algorithm called as (MRTHA) is designed with the idea of escaping the prey to improve the overall performance of the RTH by avoiding the local traps, improving the global exploration and preventing premature convergence. The gain values of the proportional integral multi-resonant controller (PI-MRC), proportional integral derivative controller (PIDC) of SHAPF, boost converter (BOC), buck boost converters (BUBOC) in the HFC, SES and BESS are chosen optimally using MRTHA. However, this algorithm is also employed to compute the optimal resistance and inductance values for the shunt filter and BOC/BUBOC with an objective of minimizing THD, enhancing power factor while maintain DC bus voltage stable. Additionally, an efficient energy management is developed and validated under different types of loads, HFC tank pressure and PV irradiation conditions. Three distinct testing scenarios are used to assess the system’s performance, and the outcomes are compared with those achieved using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Firefly algorithm (FFA), Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO), and traditional three-level converters with proportional integral controller (PIC) and Fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The outcomes clearly show that the suggested approach achieves THD that is well within IEEE standards and lower than those of the other approaches. The technique was created with MATLAB/Simulink 2022b.