Application of Active Power Filters to compensate reactive power

Active power filters (APFs) play an important role in elimination of power system harmonics. According to these structures, they can be used to compensate of network reactive power. In this paper, reactive power compensation along with removing of network harmonics by APF has been studied. For this purpose, an active power filter has been simulated using hysteresis current control (HCC) method in the PSIM software. Simulations have been accomplished for different operation modes such as harmonics elimination, reactive power compensation and instantaneously harmonics elimination along with reactive power compensation. Obtained results have shown that by a suitable planning of APFs can be used their capabilities in the reactive power compensation application.