Switched Capacitor Active Power Filter Optimization Using Nature-Inspired Techniques

The persistent growth of nonlinear loads connected to the power systems has resulted in numerous power quality problems. One of the main problems is the generated current harmonics, which distort the sinusoidal source current waveform. Over the years, these harmonics have been mitigated using passive power filters, active power filter, and hybrid filters. Many active filters configurations have been utilized including the switched capacitor filters, which are less bulky, less expensive and use lower switching frequency than other active filters. In this paper, the switched capacitor filter is employed to alleviate the total harmonic distortion of the source current using Nature-inspired Metaheuristic Algorithms; Ant Colony Optimization, Genetic Algorithm and particle swarm optimization, to obtain the optimum performance.