Careful Connection: Selecting the Best Point of Connection for Shunt Active Power Filters in Multibus Power Distribution Systems

SINCE SHUNT ACTIVE POWER filters operate as controlled current sources injecting current harmonic components to the power distribution system, the point of connection must be carefully selected so the generated harmonic components flow to the nonlinear loads and do not propagate through the distribution system. In this article a numerical analysis based on analytical formulation that uses the power distribution system voltage and current transfer matrices is derived providing a user friendly and general tool to determine the most adequate point of connection for shunt active filters, improving the compensation effectiveness. Moreover, the proposed method allows the technical evaluation of the shunt active compensation in all the power distribution system. The validity of the developed method is verified by theory and computer simulation. Application to a real multibus power distribution system is presented.