This paper presents a load equivalent conductance based control method for a shunt active power filter. The principle of energy balance in the circuit, which means between supplying source - active filter - load, is used to obtain the control formula. The natural inertia of the active filter action is exploited, so no PI regulators are needed. The active filter can compensate for non-active current and, additionally, can stabilise the supplying source active power. In a case of generating loads energy harvesting is possible. The presented method is useful as well for voltage-source as current-source inverter based active filters, and for DC system as well as for AC single- or three-phase one.