<p>The high penetration of power electronic converters in microgrids (MGs) has resulted in several power quality issues, such as harmonic disturbances, reactive power loss, and problems in power scheduling accuracy. Therefore, more and more uncoordinated controlled active power filters (APFs) are being utilized in MGs. However, interdependent operation of these APFs may result in high reactive power loss, high capacity, and poor harmonic compensation performance. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a new scheduling strategy for MGs, which includes the coordinated control of APFs as the main objective. This method separates the AC bus current into fundamental and harmonic components and utilizes particle swarm optimization (PSO) to optimize the energy scheduling and the cooperation of distributed APFs. The proposed strategy has several advantages, such as reduced reactive power loss and capacity of APFs, and good harmonic compensation results. Part II of this paper establishes the equivalent circuit of the MG and the APF compensation principle. Part III determines the objective function of this strategy, several constraints, and the model solution pathway. The effectiveness of this strategy is verified by simulation results in part IV.</p>