Trace of Flicker Sources by Using the Quantity of Flicker Power

Industries that produce flicker are often placed close to each other and connected to the same power grid system. This implies that the measured flicker level at the point of common coupling (PCC) is a result of contribution from a number of different flicker sources. In a mitigation process it is essential to know which one of the flicker sources is the dominant one. Therefore this paper proposes a method to determine the flicker propagations and trace the flicker sources by using flicker power measurements. Flicker power is considered as a quantity containing both sign and magnitude. The sign determines if a flicker source is placed downstream or upstream with respect to a given monitoring point and the magnitude is used to determine the propagation of flicker power throughout the power network and to trace the dominant flicker source. This paper covers the theoretical background of flicker power and describes a novel method for calculation of flicker power that can be implemented in a power network analyzer. Also a conducted field test based on the proposed method is described in the paper.