Optimal filter allocation for harmonics suppression in power systems

With the advance of power electronics technology, power electronics devices have been widely used in industry, home appliances, office automation, etc. These devices may cause harmonics which may result in voltage distortions and device malfunctions. Thus the concerns with harmonics problems are growing. In this paper, we propose a new technique that makes use of a nonlinear programming technique to find out the optimal allocation and composition of passive filters. This technique is undertaken to remove harmonics and suppress voltage distortions in power systems in terms of the economy of the entire system when the harmonics generation sources are found. The proposed method makes the best use of the economy of passive filters, solves the resonance problem with the power system and finds the minimum number of allocations with the proper compositions. To verify the validity of the proposed method, we have carried out simulation studies using an IEEE 30-bus system.