New Distortion and Unbalance Indices Based on Power Quality Analyzer Measurements

Voltage and current waveform distortion are more prevalent on power systems today related to nonlinear loads. The proliferation of loads of this kind and their interaction with the power supply system is increasing the need to use power monitoring equipment to evaluate electric power quality. Measurements show that waveform harmonics and unbalance are variable over time due to changes in load conditions and in the system configuration. Thus, the electrical engineer has a large amount of data available from each phase, acquired using commercial Analyzers. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways to characterize this group of recorded data, to allow proper evaluation of the situation. Two indices, which can be calculated with these measurements, are proposed in this work: a three-phase total demand distortion index and a total unbalance index. In addition, this paper proposes an easy way to characterize the time-varying data to simplify their representation. The exposed procedures are applied to the data registered from an electrical power system, to show the performance of the proposed methods.