Minimizing harmonic distortion in power system with optimal design of hybrid active power filter using differential evolution

Hybrid active power filter (HAPF) is an advanced form of harmonic filter combining advantages of both active and passive filters. In HAPF, selection of active filter gain, passive inductive and capacitive reactances, while satisfying system constraints on individual and overall voltage and current harmonic distortion levels, is the main challenge. To optimize HAPF parameters, this paper proposes an approach based on differential evolution (DE) algorithm called L-SHADE. SHADE is the success history based parameter adaptation technique of DE optimization process for a constrained, multimodal non-linear objective function. L-SHADE improves the performance of SHADE with linearly reducing the population size in successive generations. The study herein considers two frequently used topologies of HAPF for parameter estimation. A single objective function consisting of both total voltage harmonic distortion (VTHD) and total current harmonic distortion (ITHD) is formulated and finally harmonic pollution (HP) is minimized in a system comprising of both non-linear source and non-linear loads. Several case studies of a selected industrial plant are performed. The output results of L-SHADE algorithm are compared with a similar past study and also with other well-known evolutionary algorithms.