Impacts of Harmonics on Power System Equipment and Design of Active Power Filter for Their Compensation

This paper presents the analysis and simulation using Matlab/Simulink of a shunt active power filter (APF) for compensating the harmonics current generated by nonlinear loads. Due to increasing the usage of power electronics equipment with linear load, the increase of the harmonics disturbance in the ac mains currents has became a major concern due to the adverse effects on all equipment. In addition, the harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads can interact adversely with a wide range of power system equipment, mostly capacitors, transformers, and motors, causing additional losses, overloading, malfunctioning and overheating and interferences. Active Power filter eliminates the harmonics which are produced through non-linear loads by generating the opposite phase harmonics which gives pure sinusoidal wave.