Power Losses Due to Pipeline Cathodic Protection (CP) 6-Pulse Rectifier

This paper identifies the current harmonic contents of a 6-pulse pipeline cathodic protection (CP) rectifier, which is commonly used to protect oil, gas and water pipelines against corrosion and fed through medium voltage (MV) O/H line grid. The harmonic current components with orders such as 5^th, 7^th and higher order harmonic components generated by the CP rectifier and injected back in the medium voltage O/H line grid are identified in this paper together with the resulting real and the reactive power losses. Filed measurements were taken to validate the Matlab-model used in this study. Simple calculations were performed to calculate the cost associated with these harmonic currents being reflected into the MV grid.