An approach to enhance the harmonic sources identification process

Harmonics can create unwanted impacts on power systems and to end-users. Electrical utilities, manufacturers and customers have been bothered by harmonic distortion problems in power systems. IEEE-519 has set up a recommended practice on this issue that has been adopted by many utility companies. In order to ensure power quality within their service territory, the utility industry has established a scheme to identify harmonic sources that exceed the limits. This harmonic source identification scheme works in most cases. However, it may affect normal operation of the system under certain conditions. In addition, it may miss important system phenomena such as resonance. This paper presents an approach to locate the harmonic sources in a radial distribution feeder that can minimize the interference of normal operation. It enhances the ability to identify the current harmonic source. A sample system is used to illustrate this approach and simulation results are presented