Systems and methods are configured to control DC side current harmonics of a cascaded H-bridge (CHB) converter that includes a plurality of cells. In various embodiments, an odd-order current harmonic is injected at the AC side of the CHB converter based on an optimization of a constrained optimization problem to achieve at least one of balancing the DC side current harmonics of the plurality of cells, reducing the DC side current harmonics of the plurality of cells, and meeting the requirements of the IEEE 519 standard. The optimization problem may include a cost function based on switching transitions of the CHB converter and at least one constraint based on, for example, an AC side current harmonic, a maximum demand load current of the CHB converter base on the IEEE 519 standard, and a zero-order current harmonic and an hth-order current harmonic for each cell of the CHB converter.