POWER QUALITY ENGINEERING

UNIT-4
HARMONICS
Harmonics is defined as a component of periodic wave(signal).
Whose frequency is integer multiple ofnfundamental frequency.
Harmonics are classified inti two different types:
1.current harmonics

2. Voltage harmonics

Voltage harmonics depends on grid or source.

Current harmonics depends on network impedance and load dependent.

HARMONIC DISTORTION
Total Harmonic Distortion of a signal is a measurement of the
harmonic distortion present and is defined as the ratio of the
sum of the powers of all harmonic components to the power of
the fundamental frequency.
Electronic ballasts reduce THD in two ways.
1. The electronic ballast has a lower THD percentage than
the magnetic ballast.
2.The biggest reduction comes from the fact that electronic
ballasts reduce the total load.

VOLTAGE VERSUS CURRENT

DISTORTION: The word harmonics is often used by itself without further qualification.
Generally, it could mean one of the following three things:
1. The harmonic voltages are too great (the voltage too distorted) for
the control to properly determine firing angles.
2. The harmonic currents are too great for the capacity of some device
in the power supply system such as a transformer, and the machine must be
operated at a lower than rated power.
3. The harmonic voltages are too great because the harmonic currents
produced by the device are too great for the given system condition.

Fig 1. Harmonic currents flowing through the impedance result in harmonic voltages at load.
As Fig. 1 shows, voltage distortion is the result of distorted currents passing
through the linear, series impedance of the power delivery system, although,
assuming that the source bus is ultimately a pure sinusoid, there is a nonlinear load
that draws a distorted current.
The harmonic currents passing through the impedance of the system cause a
voltage drop for each harmonic.

 Recognition of this fact is the basis for the division of

responsibilities for harmonic control that are found in standards
such as IEEE Standard 519-1992, Recommended Practices and
Requirements for Harmonic Control in Electrical Power Systems:
1. The control over the amount of harmonic current injected into
the system takes place at the end-use application.
2. Assuming the harmonic current injection is within reasonable
limits, the control over the voltage distortion is exercised by the
entity having control over the system impedance, which is often
the utility.

HARMONICS VERSUS
TRANSIENTS:Harmonic distortion is blamed for many power quality disturbances that are actually
transients. A measurement of the event may show a distorted waveform with obvious highfrequency components.
Although transient disturbances contain high-frequency components, transients and harmonics
are distinctly different phenomena and are analyzed differently.
Transient waveforms exhibit the high frequencies only briefly after there has been an abrupt
change in the power system. The frequencies are not necessarily harmonics; they are the
natural frequencies of the system at the time of the switching operation.
Transients are usually dissipated within a few cycles. Transients are associated with changes
in the system such as switching of a capacitor bank. Harmonics are associated with the
continuing operation of a load.

HARMONIC INDICES
The two most commonly used indices for measuring the harmonic
content of a waveform are the total harmonic distortion and the total
demand distortion. Both are measures of the effective value of a
waveform and may be applied to either voltage or current.

Total harmonic distortion: The THD is a measure of the effective value of the harmonic
components of a distorted waveform. That is, it is the potential
heating value of the harmonics relative to the fundamental. This
index can be calculated for either voltage or current.

 where Mh is the rms value of harmonic component h

of the quantity M.
The rms value of a distorted waveform is the square
root of the sum of the squares as shown in Eqs. (5.3)
and (5.4). The THD is related to the rms value of the
waveform as follows:

HARMONIC SOURCES FROM

COMMERCIAL LOADS
Commercial facilities such as office complexes, department stores, hospitals, and
Internet data centers are dominated with high-efficiency fluorescent lighting with
electronic ballasts, adjustable-speed drives for the heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning (HVAC) loads, elevator drives, and sensitive electronic equipment
supplied by single-phase switch-mode power supplies.
Commercial loads are characterized by a large number of small harmonicproducing loads. Depending on the diversity of the different load types, these small
harmonic currents may add in phase or cancel each other.
The voltage distortion levels depend on both the circuit impedances and the overall
harmonic current distortion.

HARMONIC SOURCES FROM

INDUSTRIAL LOADS
Modern industrial facilities are characterized by the
widespread application of nonlinear loads.
Nonlinear industrial loads can generally be grouped into three
categories:
1. Three-phase power converters,
2. Arcing devices, and
3.Saturable devices.

LOCATING HARMONIC SOURCES

On radial utility distribution feeders and industrial plant power systems, the main
tendency is for the harmonic currents to flow from the harmonic-producing load to
the power system source.
This is illustrated in Fig. 13. This general tendency of harmonic current flows can
be used to locate sources of harmonics.

Transformer magnetizing current and harmonic spectrum.

SYSTEM RESPONSE CHARACTERISTICS

In power systems, the response of the system is equally as important as the sources
of harmonics.
In fact, power systems are quite tolerant of the currents injected by harmonicproducing loads unless there is some adverse interaction with the impedance of the
system. Identifying the sources is only half the job of harmonic analysis.
There are three primary variables affecting the system response characteristics:
1.The system impedance,
2.The presence of a capacitor bank, and
3.The amount of resistive loads in the system.

INTERHARMONICS
According to the Fourier theory, a periodic waveform can be expressed as a sum of
pure sine waves of different amplitudes where the frequency of each sinusoid is an
integer multiple of the fundamental frequency of the periodic waveform.
A frequency that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency is called a
harmonic frequency.
One primary source of interharmonics is the widespread use of electronic power
converter loads capable of producing current distortion over a whole range of
frequencies, i.e., characteristic and noncharacteristic frequencies.

 Typical characteristic harmonics in the ac-side line currents are 11 th, 13th, 23rd, 25th,
, with some non characteristic harmonics such as the 5 th and 7th also possibly
present.
2fo fs, 4fo fs
where fo and fs are the furnace operating frequency and the fundamental of
the ac main frequency, respectively.

DEVICES FOR CONTROLLING

HARMONIC DISTORTION
There are a number of devices available to control harmonic distortion.
They can be as simple as a capacitor bank or a line reactor, or as complex as an
active filter.
The following material first discusses the effectiveness of a simple inline reactor, or
choke, in mitigating harmonic distortion.
Two general classes of harmonic filters,
1. passive filters,
2. active filters.

In-line reactors or chokes

A simple, but often successful, method to control harmonic distortion generated by

adjustable-speed drives involves a relatively small reactor, or choke, inserted at the
line input side of the drive. This is particularly effective for PWM-type drives.

It is also important to note that there are other advantages of the choke in ASD
applications.

Fig Three phase line choke for ASD applications.

Zigzag transformers
Zigzag transformers are often applied in commercial facilities to control zerosequence harmonic components.
A zigzag transformer acts like a filter to the zero-sequence current by offering a
low-impedance path to neutral.
The two most important problems in commercial facilities are overloaded neutral
conductors and transformer heating.
Both of these problems can be solved with proper zigzag transformer placement.

Passive filters
Passive filters are inductance, capacitance, and resistance elements configured and
tuned to control harmonics.
They are commonly used and are relatively inexpensive compared with other
means for eliminating harmonic distortion.
They are employed either to shunt the harmonic currents off the line or to block
their flow between parts of the system by tuning the elements to create a resonance
at a selected frequency.

several types of common filter arrangements shown below.

Active filters
Active filters are relatively new types of devices for eliminating harmonics.
They are based on sophisticated power electronics and are much more expensive
than passive filters.
However, they have the distinct advantage that they do not resonate with the system.
Active filters can work independently of the system impedance characteristics.
Thus, they can be used in very difficult circumstances where passive filters cannot
operate successfully because of parallel resonance problems.
Active filters can typically be programmed to correct for the power factor as well as
harmonics.