New Resolution of the Unbalance Power According to Std. 1459

Harmonic distortion and load unbalances have been an important issue in the last few years, motivating a large number of studies in active power compensators used for the power network quality improvement. Following an approach similar to the one used in IEEE Std. 1459 for the non-fundamental effective apparent power, a new resolution of the unbalance power is presented in this paper. The proposed power magnitudes allow explanation of the results obtained when shunt active power compensators are used in customer installations to improve the power quality. Related to the new unbalance power resolution, new merit factors are introduced in this paper to provide a measure of the quality level in the installation. Simulated and experimental results are analyzed in the paper by using the proposed resolution.