Basic Characteristics of IEC Flickermeter Processing

Abstract

Flickermeter is a common name for a system that measures the obnoxiousness of flicker caused by voltage fluctuations. The output of flickermeter is a value of short-term flicker severity indicator, . This paper presents the results of the numerical simulations that reconstruct the processing of flickermeter in frequency domain. With the use of standard test signals, the characteristics of flickermeter were determined for the case of amplitude modulation of input signal, frequency modulation of input signal, and for input signal with interharmonic component. For the needs of simulative research, elements of standard IEC flickermeter signal chain as well as test signal source and tools for acquisition, archiving, and presentation of the obtained results were modeled. The results were presented with a set of charts, and the specific fragments of the charts were pointed out and commented on. Some examples of the influence of input signal’s bandwidth limitation on the flickermeter measurement result were presented for the case of AM and FM modulation. In addition, the diagrams that enable the evaluation of flickermeter’s linearity were also presented.