Several Sufficient Conditions for Harmonic Source Identification in Power Systems

Abstract

The power direction method is a widely used method for harmonic source identification. This method can work with no harmonic impedance information but is not theoretically rigorous. To overcome this theoretical shortcoming of the traditional power direction method, six existence criteria and two dominance criteria are proposed in this paper. These are all sufficient conditions that are mathematically derived based on the widely used utility–customer equivalent circuit. The existence criteria can be used to determine whether some harmonic source exists on the customer or utility side, and the dominance criteria can be used to identify whether the customer side is the dominant harmonic source. These criteria can be regarded as an improved power direction method, and the key improvement is the establishment of a rigorous theoretical basis. These criteria were tested using a MATLAB program, and no counterexample was found. Their practical application for harmonic source identification in a transformer substation is also introduced and discussed.