Method for Evaluation of the Utility’s and Consumers’ Contribution to the Current and Voltage Distortions at the PCC

Abstract

In this article, a method that allows sharing responsibilities for the generation of harmonic currents between the utility and consumers powered by one point of common coupling (PCC) is addressed. For these purposes, mathematical modeling of the power supply system (PSS) with two consumers is carried out in order to introduce new indices using the simplest PSS structure as an example. Two indices are introduced that quantify the consumers’ contribution to the distortion of current and voltage at the PCC and that evaluate harmonic emission from the utility side. Experimental tests are carried out where both linear and nonlinear loads are considered, capacitive loads are taken into account, and harmonic distortions from the utility side are modeled to show the applicability of the indices in a wide range of load types. The experiments confirmed the theoretical results and illustrated that the quantitative assessment of the contributions is unambiguous. It suggests that the proposed criterion could be a reasonable basis for further tax policy on harmonic pollution for each consumer at the PCC and for the utility.

Keywords

• harmonics
• distortion
• power supply system
• nonlinear load
• distortion source