A study of passive harmonic filter planning for an AC microgrid

A microgrid usually consists of small-scale of thermal generation sources and other distributed energy resources (DER) such as photovoltaic, wind power, and fuel cells to serve its loads. The microgrid can increase DER penetrations and operation reliability through appropriate control schemes and energy management. When the inverter-based DERs supply electric energy to nonlinear loads in the microgrid, harmonic currents are produced and resonances in the grid may occur and causes negative impacts on some critical loads or other equipment, as well as extra power losses. To mitigate the undesired harmonic effects and improve the microgrid performance, this paper presents a study of planning single-tuned passive harmonic filters for the microgrid. Simulation results show that the designed filters can effectively mitigate the harmonic currents in the microgrid.