Evaluation of harmonic detection methods for active power filter applications

In the attempt to minimize the harmonic disturbances created by the non-linear loads the choice of the active power filters comes out to improve the filtering efficiency and to solve many issues existing with classical passive filters. One of the key points for a proper implementation of an active filter is to use a good method for current/voltage reference generation. There exist many implementations supported by different theories (either in time- or frequency-domain), which continuously debate their performances proposing ever better solutions. This paper gives a survey of the common used theories. Then, the work here proposes a simulation setup that decouples the harmonic reference generator from the active filter model and its controller. In this way the selected methods can be equally analyzed and compared with respect to their performance, which helps anticipating possible implementation issues. The conclusions are collected and a comparison is given at the end, which is useful in deciding the future hardware setup implementation. The comparison shows that the choice of numerical filtering is a key factor for obtaining good accuracies and dynamics for an active filter.