Calibration system for power quality instrumentation

In the past few years the number of loads producing harmonics in the power system has grown. As a consequence new definitions for electrical quantities under nonsinusoidal conditions have been discussed particularly in view to apply a fairer distribution of the financial burden required to operate the system and to maintain the quality of the service. Considering the rapid deregulation of electrical utilities, it is important to know what impact any new definition will have on the overall rate structures and billing charges, especially those applied to the major industrial clients. This paper describes a calibration system which can be used to investigate the performance of revenue meters based on the existing definitions in comparison with new measuring methods being proposed, for test waveforms of field recorded data. For this study some of the definitions proposed in the new IEEE Standard 1459-2000 were considered.