Efficiency of active electrical power consumption in the presence of harmonic pollution: a sensitive analysis

The introduction of static electrical energy meter is revolutionizing the measurement of the electrical energy. Several question and studies are proposed in the scientific literature concerning with metrological and reliability aspects of the actual electrical energy measurement. Different issues are applied for the active and reactive electrical energy measurements. The former seems to be assessed in terms of definition, physical meaning and measurement methods while discussions are carried out about aspects as the metrological characterization of the meters. The latter shows a number of opened questions on all of the above-mentioned measurement issues. Even if the scientific community agrees on the significance and metrics characterizing the active energy measurements, none information seems to be given about the quantitative relation between the power quality disturbances and the efficiency in the active electrical energy consumption. More in detail, even if it is well known that polluted environments and electrical transport systems always reduce the efficiency of an electrical system, it would be useful to determine the quotes of loss of active electric energy power due to the disturbance respect to the ideal case. the paper proposes an extended sensitive analysis with a double aim: (i) to quantitatively estimate as distortions in the voltage and current waveforms modify the efficiency in the consumption of electrical active power, and (ii) to validate in experimental environment the relation, defined in the IEEE 1459 standard, which links the active power consumption and synthetic PQ indexes as the total harmonic distortion.