Reactors are designed:

- Grounding, arc suppressing reactors (Peterson coils) - for compensation of the current capacitance component in single-phase grounding faults. The reactors are used to reduce an earth fault current, for decreasing of voltage recovery rate on the damaged phase after extinguishing the grounding arc, for surge reduction at the arc re-ignition and for creation a conditions for its spontaneous extinguishing.
- Shunting - for parallel connection to AC mains for capacitive current compensation.

- Smoothing - to smooth ripples of the rectified current.
- Current-limiting - for limiting of short circuit surge currents in AC electric mains.