Recently, a new technology called as electric spring (ES) is used for suppressing the voltage fluctuation and stabilising the smart grid. To address the harmonic issue in case of non-linear critical load and for achieving voltage regulation in presence of disturbance source, this paper suggests ES-1 topology and proposes modified instantaneous symmetrical component algorithm (ISCA). The reference currents extracted using proposed ISCA with hysteresis current control (HCC) operates ES in active power filter (APF) mode. This improved algorithm can mitigate the harmonics in the source currents effectively, facilitate to set the source-side power factor (PF) to the desired value (unity) and simultaneously perform the task of critical load voltage regulation using single multifunctional control. A detailed comparison between existing ES control schemes and the proposed ISCA approach highlights the benefits of proposed control in terms of its multifunctional capabilities. The ES-1 utilises three-phase inverter with DC-link capacitor that compensates unbalance non-critical load and non-linear critical load. To demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed method to operate ES in APF mode, the results using MATLAB simulations are presented and compared with those few obtained for similar existing control schemes. The proposed control is also validated using experimental studies.