Modeling of Home Appliances for Power Distribution System Harmonic Analysis

Single-phase diode-bridge converter-based loads have become a common load type in power distribution systems. It has become very important to consider their harmonic impact on the power quality (PQ) of power distribution systems because they now represent a large percentage of residential loads. One of the challenges in modeling these loads for harmonic analysis is the lack of model parameters. This paper proposes an approach to estimate the model parameters, suitable for use in frequency-domain harmonic analysis, through a measurement-based technique. Both the proposed method and the resulting harmonic model have been verified by simulations and measurements in this paper. In addition, this paper analyzes the sensitivities of the model parameters on the accuracies of predicting harmonic currents generated by these loads. An application of the frequency-domain model is also presented in this paper.