Determining the harmonic impacts of multiple harmonic-producing loads

Identifying harmonic sources in a given power system is an important task for utility power quality management. This paper presents a new class of harmonic source identification problems: how to quantify the harmonic impact of several known harmonic-producing loads on the harmonic levels observed at a network location. The paper first defines the problem and proposes a harmonic impact index to theorize the problem. The paper then presents a statistical-inference-based method to estimate the index. The data required for this analysis are the harmonic voltage and current magnitudes continuously collected by the existing power quality monitors. The characteristics of the proposed method are investigated through case studies. Finally, additional applications and improvements of the proposed method are discussed.