Active Power Filter Commitment for Harmonic Compensation in Microgrids

Harmonic distortions are going to be more important in the near future due to the growing utilization of power electronic (PE) based devices. The PE devices usually exhibit a nonlinear behavior leading to inject harmonics to the network. Meanwhile, widespread employment of distributed energy resources (DER) with their PE-based power conditioning units, may impose some harmonics into the network. Hence proper mitigation methods should be employed by distribution operators to enhance the level of the power quality. In this paper, a harmonic monitoring center (HMC) is proposed for central management harmonic mitigation activities of distributed harmonic active power filters (APFs). The compensation actions of APFs are determined by the HMC based on an optimization model called as APF commitment model. Economic satisfaction of harmonic standards is considered as the goal of optimization algorithm with respects to various technical and systematic constraints. In the simulations, the developed model shows a better performance and capability compared to the existing local management methods of distributed APFs.