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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2007

Application of Modal Sensitivity for Power System

Harmonic Resonance Analysis
Zhenyu Huang, Senior Member, IEEE, Yu Cui, and Wilsun Xu, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractHarmonic resonance is closely related to the singularity of a network admittance matrix. The smallest eigenvalue
of the matrix defines the mode of harmonic resonance. This
paper applies this eigenvalue theory and proposes a method to
determine which network components have significant contributions to a harmonic resonance phenomenon. The basic idea is to
calculate the sensitivities of a resonance mode to the parameters
of network components. The sensitivity results are then ranked
to quantify the impact of each component. In this paper, the
eigen-sensitivity theory as applied to harmonic resonance mode
analysis is presented. Case studies are used to verify the theory. A
practical example is given to illustrate the application of the proposed method. In addition, this paper further conducts extensive
comparative analysis on three types of network-oriented modal
analysis techniques. The results have clarified the similarities and
differences among the techniques.
Index TermsEigenvalue sensitivity, harmonic resonance, harmonics, modal analysis, power quality.

I. INTRODUCTION

ARMONIC resonance is a major concern for power

system harmonic control. There is a general lack of practical tools that can determine the participation or contribution of
various network components to a particular resonance situation.
The most well-known tool for harmonic resonance analysis at
present is the frequency scan technique. The frequency scan
technique can reveal if resonance exists. However, it cannot
tell which network components cause the resonance and where
is the best location to mitigate the problem. A technique that
can answer these questions is particularly important nowadays
since there are more and more harmonic-producing loads in
power systems. Any one of the sources could excite harmonic
resonance.
Over the years, it has been observed that harmonic resonance
is related to the presence of large elements in the inverted network admittance matrix. It was found that such a phenomenon is
associated with the singularity of the matrix. Since matrix singularity is caused by one of its eigenvalues approaching zero,
one can analyze the characteristics of the eigenvalue to find the

Manuscript received October 25, 2005; revised July 4, 2006. This work was
supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
and was conducted at the University of Alberta. Paper no. TPWRS-00646-2005.
Z. Huang is with the Energy Science and Technology Directorate, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99354 USA (e-mail: zhenyu.
huang@pnl.gov).
Y. Cui and W. Xu are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2V4, Canada (e-mail:
wxu@ ece.ualberta.ca; yucui@ece.ualberta.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2006.883678

nature and extent of the resonance. This reasoning has led us to

propose a harmonic resonance mode analysis (RMA) technique
[1]. The work has shown that harmonic resonance is indeed associated with the smallest eigenvalue of the admittance matrix,
called the critical resonance mode. Eigenvectors or participation factors of the critical mode can reveal the location where
the resonance can be most easily excited and observed.
This paper is a continuation of the work presented in [1] .
The main objective is to investigate the sensitivity of the critical
mode with respect to network component parameters. We believe such sensitivity information could reveal which network
component has the most influence on the resonance. The sensitivity results are compared with participation factors to determine their similarity and differences. Based on the investigation,
a systematic method to conduct harmonic RMA is formulated.
The method is demonstrated using a practical industry example.
The modal analysis technique has been applied to analyzing
circuits in other forms. One example is the state-space circuit
model and associated eigen-analysis [2] , [3] . The second objective of this paper is to conduct comparative analysis on various
modal analysis techniques that have been proposed for power
system harmonic analysis.
II. RESONANCE MODE AND MODAL SENSITIVITY
The problem of frequency scan analysis can be formulated as
follows:
(1)
where
is the network admittance matrix at frequency ,
is the nodal voltage vector, and
is the nodal current injection vector, respectively. For the purpose of frequency scan,
has only one entry that has a value of 1.0 p.u., and all other entries are equal to 0. To simplify notation, the subscript will be
omitted in the remainder of this paper. Frequency scan is to calculate the driving point impedance looking into the system from
the current injection bus at different frequencies. Peaks on the
curve of the driving point impedance versus frequency suggest
potential harmonic resonance points. In other words, the system
exhibits large impedance at resonance frequencies.
If a sharp harmonic resonance is observed at a particular frequency, it implies that some nodal voltages are very high. This
can only occur when the matrix approaches singularity. Reference [1] presents the theory of RMA to investigate how the
matrix approaches singularity. Based on modal analysis, the
matrix can be decomposed into the following form:

0885-8950/$25.00 2007 IEEE

(2)

HUANG et al.: APPLICATION OF MODAL SENSITIVITY FOR POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC RESONANCE ANALYSIS

where
is the diagonal eigenvalue
and
matrix, and
are the left and right eigenvector matrices, respectively. Superscript indicates matrix transpose. The diagonal entries
of have the unit of admittance. Its inverse is called modal
. The th modal impedance is defined as follows:
impedance

223

is the th element in the right eigenvector and

where
the th element in the left eigenvector . Equation (8) shows
entry is
that the eigen-sensitivity with respect to a specific
the product of corresponding right and left eigenvectors. A sencan then be defined as [10], [11]
sitivity matrix

(3)
A singular
matrix means that one of the eigenvalues of
the is close to zero, i.e., the corresponding modal impedance
approaches infinity. This eigenvalue is called the critical resonance mode at this particular frequency. It is this mode that
causes the observed resonance phenomenon. The above theory
can be further extended to determine the impact of various network components on the resonance mode. This can be achieved
using eigenvalue sensitivity (modal sensitivity) analysis as explained below.
For the th eigenvalue in (2) , its right and left eigenvectors
satisfy the following equations:
and

(5)
and applying the first two equations in

(6)
Equation (6) implies that the eigenvalue sensitivity to a parameter can be obtained by the matrix sensitivity to the same
parameter.
A. Eigenvalue Sensitivities With Respect to

Hence, the eigenvalue sensitivity with respect to

entry in the sensitivity matrix, i.e.,

is the

(10)

(4)

Suppose is a network component parameter, e.g., capacitance of a shunt. Differentiating the third equation in (4) with
respect to yields

Post-multiplying by
(4) , one can obtain

(9)

B. Eigenvalue Sensitivities With Respect

to Network Components
All network components can be categorized as two groups in
terms of their impact on matrix entries:
1) shunt components at bus , which affect only one diagonal
;
entry
2) series components between buses and , which affect diagonal entries
and
, and nondiagonal entries
and
.
The eigenvalue sensitivity with respect to shunt and series
components can be calculated as follows.
1) Shunt Components: For a shunt component with admitat bus , it is known that
tance

Matrix Entries

One of the immediate applications of (6) is to find the sensitivity of the critical mode with respect to a particular entry of
. Obviously, the derivative of matrix with
the matrix
has a value of 1 at the position of the entry and
respect to
zeros at all other positions

(7)

Substituting with (7) in (6) and using the denotation in (4) ,

one can find the eigenvalue sensitivity with respect to a entry
can be calculated as follows:
(8)

where
represents other shunt components at bus . Thus,
is
from (6), the eigenvalue sensitivity to
(11)
One can see that eigenvalue sensitivities with respect to shunt
network components are actually same as bus participation factors [1].
, and
are complex values. This is not
In (11), ,
desirable in resonance studies as the eigenvalue magnitudes are
of much greater concern. Moreover, the derivative to a complex
is also confusing. To address this problem, an altervalue
native sensitivity form is derived as follows. Assume that

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2007

Consider there is a

change, which causes a

change

By employing the chain derivative rule

(15)
(16)

Let

and eliminate the higher order items

C. Normalized Sensitivities

Similarly

Convert

back to
(12)
(13)

2) Series Components: For a series component with admittance

between buses and , the eigenvalue sensitivity is

The above sensitivity indexes reflect the relationship of critical eigenvalue magnitudes with respect to actual network components. Both of them are with actual units. Under certain situations, it could be more desirable to have normalized sensitivities that are sensitivity indexes with relative units instead
of actual ones, that is, 10% of modal impedance magnitude
increase with 1% of capacitor capacitance increase compares
capacitance
with 0.1 increase of modal impedance with 1
increase. Another advantage of using normalized sensitivities
is to make indexes with different components comparable. For
example, it may not make sense if one says the impact of 0.1
H inductance change is greater than that of 0.001 F capacitance
change, but it can reveal the relative impact by comparing 1%
inductor change with 1% capacitor change. Normalized sensitivities can be expressed as follows:

(17)

(14)
It can be seen that eigenvalue sensitivities with respect to series network components are certain combinations of the entries
, eigenvalue magniof the sensitivity matrix . Similar to
tude sensitivity with resistive and reactive components can also
be obtained. For a series network component, it is usually repinstead
resented by an equivalent impedance
of an admittance
. Thus, it will be more convalues. The
venient to obtain the sensitivity with the and
new form of sensitivity is derived as follows.
Assume that

and can be obtained by using the same approach as that for

shunt components in the previous subsection. As the admittance
is the reciprocal of the impedance, the following derivatives can
be obtained:

where
and
represent the relative changes of the
eigenvalue magnitude and a network component parameter, respectively. Equation (17) shows that normalization can be done
by simply multiplying the sensitivity with the original value of
the network component parameter divided by the eigenvalue
magnitude.
D. Summary
Eigenvalue sensitivity concepts are introduced in this section,
including sensitivity matrix (sensitivity to matrix entries) and
sensitivity to actual network components. Normalized eigenvalue magnitude sensitivities with respect to shunt components
and series components are of the most interest for harmonic resonance studies and mitigation. The procedure to calculate these
sensitivity indexes is summarized as follows.
1) Find the sensitivity matrix using (9).
2) Obtain eigenvalue magnitude sensitivities by (12), (13),
(15), and (16).
3) Calculate normalized sensitivities with (17).
Normalized sensitivities are used throughout the remaining
parts of this paper.
III. CASE STUDY RESULTS
The IEEE 14-bus test system [5] is used to illustrate the application of the eigen-sensitivity theory to harmonic resonance
analysis. Fig. 1 and Table I show the resonance mode information of the test system [1]. In Fig. 1, each peak on the curves
indicated one resonance mode. Table I also shows the most participating bus for each resonance frequency, which were identified by the largest participation factors.

HUANG et al.: APPLICATION OF MODAL SENSITIVITY FOR POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC RESONANCE ANALYSIS

Fig. 1. Mode shapes of the IEEE 14-bus system.

225

Fig. 2. Normalized sensitivities of critical eigenvalue magnitude with respect

to series reactances or shunt susceptances at h = 4:2 p:u.

TABLE I
RESONANCE MODE INFORMATION OF THE TEST SYSTEM

Fig. 3. Normalized sensitivities of critical eigenvalue magnitude with respect

to series reactances or shunt susceptances at h = 10:7 p:u.
TABLE II
EIGEN -SENSITIVITIES WITH RESPECT TO Y ENTRIES

contained in eigen-sensitivities is to be employed for harmonic

resonance analysis.
B. Eigen-Sensitivity With Respect to Network Components

A. Eigen-Sensitivity With Respect to

Entries

Table II provides the largest eigen-sensitivities with respect

entries together with the
entries subscripts where the
to
largest eigen-sensitivities are observed. It can be seen that the
entries with the largest eigen-sensitivities are the entries associated with those most participating buses shown in Table I.
Furthermore, the participation factors in Table I are exactly the
same as the largest -entry eigen-sensitivities. Therefore, participation factors are part of eigen-sensitivities as shown in (11),
entries have the dominant impact
indicating that diagonal
on eigenvalues. This observation also shows the validity of the
method using participation factors to assess harmonic resonance
impact because participation factors are indeed the most critical elements among all the eigen-sensitivities at this bus-level
analysis.
On the other hand, eigen-sensitivities contain complete information about harmonic resonance. In Sections III-B and C, the
eigen-sensitivities are studied further, and the extra information

Eigen-sensitivity studies have been carried out for all the resonance modes shown in Fig. 1. Due to limited space, only re, 10.7, and 25.3 p.u., which represent different
sults for
frequency ranges, are presented in Figs. 24. The figures show
the normalized sensitivities of critical eigenvalue magnitudes
with respect to series reactances or shunt capacitance. The bar
charts show the sensitivity indexes to shunt or series components in a descending order. Five components with the largest
indexes are labeled. The bubble charts provide the same information in a more visualized way with the topology of the IEEE
14-bus system as background. Bubbles on a bus or a line indicate whether the sensitivity index is with respect to a shunt or
a series component. The size of a bubble is in proportion to the
magnitude of the sensitivity index.
From these figures, the following observations can be
obtained.
Harmonic resonance modes are mainly affected by only
a few components, while most components have little or
insignificant impact on the resonance modes.
The sensitivities of critical eigenvalue magnitudes with respect to network components may not always be consistent
with bus participation factors. It is true that buses with large
participation factors are generally heavily involved in a resonance condition. However, this does not mean that the
resonance can be effectively mitigated by adjusting components at those buses.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2007

Fig. 4. Normalized sensitivities of critical eigenvalue magnitude with respect

to series reactances or shunt susceptances at h = 25:3 p:u.

Fig. 6. Practical five-bus test system (load model is based on [6]).

Fig. 7. Modal scan result for the test system.

Fig. 5. Impact of parameters on the resonance mode of h = 4:2 p:u.
TABLE III
RESONANCE MODE INFORMATION OF THE TEST SYSTEM

C. Impact of Parameters on Potential Resonance

Eigenvalue sensitivity with respect to network components
is a good index to measure the impact of parameter change on
potential resonance. One can expect to mitigate or even eliminate certain resonance by adjusting parameters of critical components identified by large eigen-sensitivities.
Previous studies show that a potential resonance in the IEEE
. The eigenvalue sensitivi14-bus system exists at
ties to network components are shown in Fig. 2. Shunt capacitance at Bus 8 has the largest normalized eigen-sensitivity and
thus is the best candidate to mitigate the resonance. The negative sensitivity indicates that if the capacitance is decreased, the
critical eigenvalue will increase and thus the modal impedance
will decrease, so the resonance will be mitigated. Fig. 5 shows
that mitigation can indeed be achieved by decreasing the shunt
capacitance. On the contrary, the resonance could become more
serious if one increases the size of the capacitor. This supports
the conclusion that eigen-sensitivities can serve as a good index
for harmonic resonance mitigation purposes.
IV. APPLICATION EXAMPLE
This section presents an example to illustrate the application
of the eigen-sensitivity theory to solving harmonic resonance
problems. Fig. 6 shows a typical industrial power system where
a group of loads with power factor correction capacitors are fed
by a utility supply. It is known that the capacitors will cause harmonic resonance. To prevent or mitigate resonance problems,
the following procedure is suggested.

1) Identify the critical modes of harmonic resonance and their

impact areas.
2) Conduct eigen-sensitivity studies to determine which components are most involved in the resonance.
3) Mitigate the resonance problem by adjusting the critical
components identified in step 2).
Resonance modes of the system are determined using the
RMA theory as shown in Fig. 7. There are a total of five modes
for this five-bus system. Four of the modes exhibit resonance
potentials as indicated by the peaks on their modal impedance
curves. Among these four modes, three of them (modes 2, 3,
and 5) are of sharp resonance nature and are of concern from
harmonic control perspectives. Table III gives information for
these three critical modes. Each of the modes is further investigated below.
mode has a resonance frequency close to
The
the fifth harmonic. The mode participation factor suggests that
bus 4 is the location where this mode can be excited most easily.
In view of the facts that bus 4 has a harmonic-producing load
and the modal frequency is very close to a harmonic frequency,
it becomes critical to mitigate this resonance.

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227

TABLE IV
MODAL IMPEDANCE CHANGE WITH RESPECT TO 5% COMPONENT
PARAMETER INCREASE AT h = 5:1 p:u:

Fig. 8. Participation factors and normalized sensitivities for the resonance

mode h = 5:10 p:u.

Fig. 10. Participation factors and normalized sensitivities for the resonance
mode h = 5:65 p:u.
Fig. 9. Resonance path for the resonance mode h = 5:10 p; u.

Fig. 8 shows participation factors and normalized eigen-senresonance mode. The participasitivities for the
tion factor chart reveals that Bus 3 also has a noticeable participation in this mode, which implies that the resonance can be
excited and observed at bus 3 to some extent. The modal sensitivity chart provides more insights for this observation. The
chart suggests that the path consisting of transformers 4, 3, and
5 resonates with capacitors 3 and 4, with transformer 4 and capacitor 4 as the main resonating pair. This situation is depicted
in Fig. 9.
Capacitors 3 and 4 have the largest sensitivities so they are
resthe best candidates to adjust to mitigate the
onance. Changing the parameters of transformer 4 (such as its
size and short-circuit impedance) will also work, but it is not a
common practice. Table IV shows the impact of 5% component
.
parameter increase on the modal impedance at
One can see that the modal impedance change is consistent
with the sensitivity results shown in Fig. 8. As a further validation, the combined change of driving point impedances at
buses 3 and 4, both of which are heavily involved with the
resonance, is also given in Table IV. Driving
point impedance is a direct indicator of harmonic resonance
severity. The consistency between the modal impedance change
and the driving point impedance change further confirms the
usefulness of the eigen-sensitivity information for harmonic resonance mitigation.
, the most participating bus is bus 3. DeFor
tailed participation factor and sensitivity results show that this
mode involves both buses 3 and 4 almost equally (see Fig. 10).
The components contributing most to the resonance are capacitors 3 and 4 as well as transformers 3 and 4. The resonance path
is shown in Fig. 11. This mode has a frequency away from har-

Fig. 11. Resonance path for the resonance mode h = 5:65 p:u.

monic frequencies. Mitigating this mode may not be of concern.

However, if one wants to do so, the work must be coordinated
resonance because cawith that of mitigating the
pacitors 3 and 4 as well as transformers 3 and 4 are also actively
resonance. The different signs
involved in the
of sensitivity values for the two modes further complicate this
work as the directions of component parameter adjustment are
opposite.
, the critical bus is bus 2 and
For the last mode
the critical components are transformer 2 and capacitor 2 (see
Fig. 12). Comparing with the other two modes, this is a localized
mode as the resonance path shown in Fig. 13, and it is easier
to be mitigated. Adjusting transformer 2 appears to be the most
effective solution. Again, it may not be necessary to mitigate this
resonance since the resonance frequency is far away from the
common harmonic frequencies of concern (5th, 7th, and 11th,
etc.).
V. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PROPOSED METHOD
WITH OTHER MODAL ANALYSIS METHODS
Independent from the proposed harmonic resonance mode
analysis technique, two other types of methods that involve the

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2007

Fig. 14. Single-bus system.

Fig. 12. Participation factors and normalized sensitivities for the resonance
mode h = 6:20 p:u.

the system. An important question to clarify is the following:

what is the relationship between the modes of the matrix and
the modes of the matrix?
In order to clarify the relationship, a simple system shown
in Fig. 14 is used as an example. The state-space model of the
system can be established as follows: for this simple circuit, the
state-space modes, denoted as
in this paper (where subscript
stands for the matrix), can be determined analytically as
follows:
(19)
The network (voltage) response to a sinusoidal current excitation of frequency has the following form:

Fig. 13. Resonance path for the resonance mode h = 6:20 p:u.

(20)
determination of network eigenvalues have been published. The
first type uses the state-space model of an RLC network and
analyzes system resonance characteristics based on eigenvalues
of the state matrix. This is a well-known technique originally
developed to study the transient performance of a network [2],
[4]. Reference [3] adopted it for harmonic analysis, and [7]
attempted to improve its applicability to power systems. The
second type conducts eigen-analysis on the
matrix at harmonic frequencies only [10], [11]. With the development of the
resonance mode analysis method, it has become necessary to
determine the similarities and differences among the methods.
The objective of this section is to answer such questions.
A. State-Space Model-Based Technique
The state-space analysis of a linear network has been well
documented in various textbooks. It is the foundation for network transient analysis. According to the theory, the state variables of a linear network are the currents of inductors and voltages of capacitors. A power system can thus be modeled as
(18)
where is the state vector, the state matrix, the excitation
vector, and is a matrix representing contribution of to state
variable derivatives. This equation can be solved to determine
the transient responses of a network. The solution has the following form:

can only be determined using the eigen-decomposition technique. The results, eigenvalues of , are called eigen-modes of

is a constant with a very complex expression. Since it

where
has no relationship with subsequent analysis, expression of
is omitted here

(21)
It can be seen that
actually determines the transient
, the frequency of transient reresponse of the system.
sponse, represents the system natural frequency.
reflects
the decaying speed of the transient component and is called the
damping coefficient. Inverse of
is the time-constant of the
network. As a result, one can conclude that
is a parameter
associated with the transient responses of a network. Accordingly, a more suitable topic to apply the matrix concept is
the transient disturbances rather than harmonics, which is a
steady-state phenomenon.
It is important to note if a sinusoidal excitation has a frequency close to
, the system tends to exhibit a stronger
response. This can be understood by analyzing parameter
,
which can be rearranged as
(22)
Equation (22) reveals that
can become quite large if approaches
. If
,
can approach infinity. This is another way of explaining resonancea resonance occurs when
the frequency of excitation approaches the natural frequency of
a system. From this perspective,
can also be applied to investigate resonance phenomenon.
The modes defined by the proposed resonance mode analysis
technique are characterized by two parameters: the frequency

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229

Fig. 15. Comparison of two sets of modal parameters.

Fig. 16. Modal scan result for the five-bus test system shown in Fig. 6.

where the network driving point impedance approaches maximum and the impedance at that frequency

In additional to the fundamental differences shown above, the

two concepts have other distinct characteristics as summarized
below.
The modes of matrix have the unit of 1/s and represent
the time-domain characteristics of a network. The modes of
matrix, on the other hand, have the unit of impedance.
They represent the frequency-domain characteristics of a
represents the magnification of a sinusoidal
network.
quantifies how fast a transient
current excitation, while
decays to zero.
modes is equal to the size of the ma The number of
trix. The modes are discrete points when viewed from the
frequency domain where harmonic analysis is conducted.
modes is equal to
On the other hand, the number of
the size of the
matrix. The modes exist at all frequencies. This difference can be easily seen from Fig. 16, which
plots the modes as functions of frequency for the system
modes only have five distinct bars. Only
of Fig. 6. The
four of them are shown in the figure as the other one is a dc
modes are curves each with a peak at their
mode. The
respective resonance frequencies. The curves provide a lot
more information than the bars since the severity of resonance at frequencies other than the resonance frequency is
quantified. This is especially important for harmonic analor
ysis since harmonic frequencies rarely coincide with
Fig. 16 also confirms that
and
do not have a proportional relationship. For example, the first three bars (
modes) have comparable magnitudes, which indicate that
the severity of the resonance should be close. However, the
modal scan result shows that the third one is much more severe than the first two. This result implies that the severity
of difof resonance cannot be decided by comparing
ferent modes.
The
analysis does not offer information as to the nodes
where a resonance can be more easily excited or observed.
maThis is caused by the inherent limitation of the
trix formulation that does not use the nodal concept. The
eigenvectors of
matrix provide critical information on

The results are in (23) and (24), shown at the bottom of the page,
where subscript indicates that the modes are determined
matrix.
is the frequency of the resofrom the network
nance mode, and
is the magnitude of the modal impedance.
represents the degree of amplification of a current excitation.
.
This pair of parameters represents resonance mode
It can be seen from (23) that
. The two frequen. Equation (24)
cies become equal only when damping
indicates that
has no simple relationship with the damping
coefficient . This analysis suggests that there is no one-to-one
correspondence between
and . Knowledge with one mode
does not necessary lead to understanding the other. This is especially true for the damping parameter
and . The difference
between the two modes has also been compared numerically.
Fig. 15 shows the ratio
as a function of
. It can be
seen that the difference increases noticeably when
is large.
The same figure also plots a scalar product
. Note that a
larger
represents a smaller damping in the harmonic domain,
and a smaller
represents a smaller damping in the transient
domain. So
is a measurement of the difference between
the two damping parameters. The result shows that
is a
constant only for very small damping values.
Although the above analysis is illustrated by a simple sample
system, the conclusions are general. This is because the sample
system represents one pair of modes for multistate or multinode
systems. From this comparative analysis, one can see that
and
are different concepts, although they are related to each
other. Each concept has its own physical meaning and explanation. When system damping is small, one can be used to approximate the other. It is worthwhile to note that the differences
between these two concepts have been recognized in modern
circuit analysis and are a subject of active research [12], [13].

(23)
(24)

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Fig. 17. Study of series resonance.

the propagation or impact areas of a harmonic resonance

[1]. This is another significant advantage of the resonance
mode analysis method.
The
analysis offers two sensitivity indexes,
and
, where is the parameter of a network comanalysis has only one sensitivity
.
ponent. The
The index
is unique to
analysis. It reveals the
impact of a parameter on resonance frequency. Such inforanalysis. From this permation is not available from
analysis has an advantage.
spective, one can see that the
analysis needs to be improved to cover this important
information.
B. Implementation Issues
In addition to the theoretical differences, the two modal analysis theories are also distinct in implementation. These subjects
are discussed here.
1) Transfer Function-Based Analysis: If Laplace transform
is applied to (18), one can obtain

where
means the adjunct matrix of
. With this
transformation, the modes can also be understood as the poles
of a system. The transfer function between an input such as a
nodal current and an output such as component voltage can be
expressed as

where
denotes zeroes of the transfer function. Unlike the
poles, zeros are input and output dependent. They represent the
modes of series resonance. It can be seen that besides the zeroes,
the -domain and transfer function formulation does not offer
any new information. They just represent an alternative view on
the transient modes of a network. In fact, eigen-decomposition
of the matrix is still the most effective way to find poles and
zeros. An example is the small-signal stability analysis program
SSAT [14].
The resonance mode analysis technique can also reveal the
modes of series resonance. For example, if one wants to check
if a series resonance can be excited from node 1, a voltage source
with a magnitude of 1.0 per-unit can be applied to this node (see
Fig. 17).
The nodal matrix of Fig. 17 can be rearranged as

A series resonance means the source current approaches infinity.

becomes very
This means that one of the eigenvalues of

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2007

masmall. Resonance mode analysis can be applied to the

trix to determine series resonance if needed (series resonance is
generally not a concern in harmonic analysis).
Matrix Analysis: Power networks are much easier to
2)
understand from nodal analysis perspective. Reference [8] utito find system
lizes an -domain nodal admittance matrix
poles with the following formulation:

The modes of

are the -values that satisfy

(25)

To directly solve the above highly nonlinear equation is an extremely complex task. Therefore, [8] formulates the problem in
the form of a transfer function between a current injection and
a bus voltage and then applies the NewtonRaphson method to
analysis provides same eigenvalue incalculate poles. This
formation as the eigen-analysis on the matrix. It is also important to point out that the eigenvectors associated with the
have different meaning from those of the
matrix. In the
case, the
and
vectors do not represent sinusoidal responses since the real part of is not zero.
3) Modeling Limitations: The state-space-based formulation has at least two modeling limitations. One is the modeling
of distributed parameter lines. To our knowledge, there is no
method available to include such a model in the state-space
formulation was developed to address this
matrix. The
limitation. Unfortunately, the approach makes the numerical
solution of modes even more complicated.
Another limitation is to model frequency-dependent imped. Such impedances are common in harmonic analances
ysis. For example, a supply system can be represented by such
an impedance. It is not possible to directly model such frematrix or
maquency-dependent components in the
trix formation. One has to create equivalent RLC networks first
using network synthesis techniques.
C.

-Based Modal Analysis

The second type of eigen-analysis-based method is to determine the eigenvalues of the

matrix [10], [11], where
stands for harmonic frequency in per unit. This method is a direct extension of the (60 Hz) eigen-analysis technique of [9]
to the harmonic frequencies. As illustrated by the papers, the
analysis seems to be that the
main benefit offered by the
smallest eigenvalue of
can be used to approximate the
response.
From the perspective of harmonic resonance mode analysis,
one can easily find a detrimental flaw of the
method:
It is very rare that a resonance frequency coincides with
harmonic frequency. Analyzing eigenvalues at limited nonresonance frequencies (i.e., harmonic frequencies) cannot provide
meaningful information on the resonance characteristics of a
network. Fig. 18 shows what
analysis can offer for the
system of Fig. 6. The pattern of resonance cannot be identified
from the modes of
since the segments in nonharmonic frequency ranges are not available. As a result, one can conclude

HUANG et al.: APPLICATION OF MODAL SENSITIVITY FOR POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC RESONANCE ANALYSIS

231

matrix-based resonance mode analysis

network. The
method is most suitable for harmonic resonance analysis.
REFERENCES

Fig. 18. Modal result provided by the Y (h) method.

that the
technique cannot perform harmonic resonance
analysis. Notwithstanding the above problems, the technique
might support harmonic power flow analysis by identifying the
impact of harmonic load currents on bus voltage distortions.
D. Summary
Based on the extensive analysis and comparison presented in
this section, the following main conclusions are obtained.
The matrix-based modal analysis is more suitable to investigate the propagation of transients in a network.
matrix-based modal analysis is the best choice for
The
harmonic resonance analysis.
matrix-based modal analysis is not suitable for
The
harmonic resonance analysis. It might be useful for harmonic power flow analysis.
matrix-based modal analysis does not offer more
The
information than already available from the matrix or
matrix-based analysis. Its computational burden is actually
more than other methods.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposes and develops a modal sensitivity technique to assist the analysis of power system harmonic resonance. Modal sensitivity concepts are introduced, including sensitivity matrix and sensitivity to actual network components,
and their normalized forms. Sensitivity indexes can help identify critical network components involved in each resonance
mode. Such information is very useful for designing strategies to
mitigate harmonic resonance problems. This paper further conducted comparative analysis on the three types of network-oriented modal analysis techniques. The main contributions and
conclusions of this paper are summarized as follows.
The most useful sensitivity information is the normalized
sensitivity of critical modal impedance (magnitude) with
respect to the component parameters. This information can
help identify the components most involved in a particular
resonance mode.
Sensitivities of the critical eigenvalues to the diagonal elements of the admittance matrix are shown to be modal
participation factors. One can therefore conclude that participation factors are a type of modal sensitivity.
Comparative analysis of three modal analysis techniques
shows that the state-space-based modal analysis is more
suitable to analyze the propagation of transients in a

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Zhenyu Huang (M01SM05) received the B.Eng. degree from Huazhong
University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1994 and the Ph.D.
degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1999.
From 1998 to 2002, he conducted research at the University of Alberta,
Edmonton, AB, Canada, and McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, as
a postdoctoral fellow and at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently
a Senior Research Engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
Richland, WA. His research interests include power electronics, power system
stability, and power quality.

Yu Cui received the B.Eng. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
in 1995, the M.Sc. degree from the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing, in 2000, and the M.Sc. degree from University
of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, in 2003. He is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
His research areas include power quality and distributed generation.

Wilsun Xu (M90SM95F05) received the Ph.D. degree from the University

of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1989.
He was with BC Hydro from 1990 to 1996 as an Engineer. He is presently
a Professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. His main research interests are power quality and harmonics.