The paper includes a summary and a background of long-time research conducted by a research team in the Institute of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at SilesianUniversity of Technology. The researchwork has principally been related to selected problems in the field of analysis and synthesis of systems aimed at symmetrisation and improvement of some power quality parameters. This paper constitutes a first part of the report on the research. It has been devoted to effective elimination of higher harmonics and reactive power compensation by means of parallel active power filters. The other problem discussed in this paper is related to this issue and it is very important from the economic point of view; it addresses optimal sizing and placement of active power filters in investigated power networks.