Passive Power Filter (PPF) is widely used in power system because of its advantages in performance-price ratio. For PPF, there are several topologies, each of which has different frequency characteristic. In power system, in order to achieve the certain filtering effect, it is necessary to combine different filter topologies. Currently, the selection of PPF topologies is based on the engineering practical experience of PPF designer. However, there is a lack in systematic design method and scientific design basis. For this reason, this paper, taking the filtering effect and filters cost as the design indices, deeply investigates the selection problem of PPF topologies, and proposes a selection method of PPF topologies. The research results show that the most reasonable combination of different filter topologies can be obtained by this method for different situation needed to mitigate harmonic and compensate reactive power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]