A non-linear hysteresis current controller (HCC) for a 2-level voltage source inverter (VSI) conventionally uses fixed-bands in individual phases for limiting the current errors. The HCC has advantages such as easy implementation, fast transient response, but it also has few disadvantages such as non-utilization of zero voltage vectors and haphazard switching of voltage vectors which may lead to limit cycles oscillations. Another type of non-linear current controller, the space vector hysteresis current controller (SVHCC), exhibits coordinated switching pattern where the inverter switching vectors tend to be similar to that of a voltage controlled space vector pulse width modulation (VC-SVPWM) scheme. This kind of optimized switching in SVHCC helps in the reduction of distortion in inverter output current injected to a grid. A comparative study of HCC and SVHCC is carried out in this work to study the distortions manifested as d-axis and q-axis current ripples. In this paper, the differences of these two PWM techniques are observed using rigorous simulation studies with respect to two operating conditions: i) distributed generation (DG) alone and ii) DG along with shunt active power filtering.