Abstract β This paper proposes a novel approach to adapt the conventional Direct Power Control (DPC) for high power applications with a third order LCL filter. The strong resonance present in the LCL filter is damped with additional effort in the system control. The application of DPC to the control of threephase Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) connected to the grid through a LCL filter has not yet been considered. An active damping strategy for the LCL filter together with harmonic rejection control is proposed over the conventional DPC. The steady state as well as the dynamic performance of the proposed system is presented by means of the simulation results and compared with the conventional approach