Harmonic emission of household devices in presence of typical voltage distortions

The level of harmonic currents emitted by nonlinear household devices depends on many factors. Beside the general circuit topology, e.g. presence or absence of power factor correction (PFC) circuit the emission depends significantly on the distortion of the supply voltage. The paper discusses typical voltage distortions in public low voltage grids and proposes parameters for their quantification. Afterwards, Simulink-based time-domain models for some electronic devices are introduced and verified by measurement data. Finally, the impact of time-domain parameters of voltage waveform on both individual devices and aggregate household loads is assessed, in order to compare their harmonic current emission for distorted and sinusoidal supply voltages.