Effective magnitude, harmonic currents

Active filters use active conditioning to compensate for harmonic currents in a power system. Figure 4.23 shows an active filter applied in a harmonic environment. The filter samples the distorted current and, using power electronic switching devices, draws a current from the source of such magnitude, frequency composition, and phase shift to cancel the harmonics in the load. The result is that the current drawn from the source is free of harmonics. An advantage of active filters over passive filters is that the active filters can respond to changing load and harmonic conditions, whereas passive filters are fixed in their harmonic response. As we saw earlier, application of passive filters requires careful analysis. Active filters have no serious ill effects associated with them. However, active filters are expensive and not suited for application in small facilities. 

One of the most important theoretical contributions of the 1970s was the work of Rudnick and Stern [26] which considered the microscopic sources of second harmonic production at metal surfaces and predicted sensitivity to surface effects. This work was a significant departure from previous theories which only considered quadrupole-type contributions from the rapid variation of the normal component of the electric field at the surface. Rudnick and Stern found that currents produced from the breaking of the inversion symmetry at the cubic metal surface were of equal magnitude and must be considered. Using a free electron model, they calculated the surface and bulk currents for second harmonic generation and introduced two phenomenological parameters, a and b , to describe the effects of the surface details on the perpendicular and parallel surface nonlinear currents. In related theoretical work, Bower [27] extended the early quantum mechanical calculation of Jha [23] to include interband transitions near their resonances as well as the effects of surface states. 

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