Distortion Sources Identification in Electric Power Systems

Distorted voltage and current waveforms is one of the problems associated to electric power quality. Continuous use of non-linear loads provokes the existence of voltage waveforms with a high distortion. Thus, it is necessary to know the responsible of this problem by means of the commonly named distortion sources identification. In this paper, the problem is analyzed through the harmonic power sign, with the objective of knowing the sense of harmonic power flow between source and one load in distorted systems. Nowadays, it has already been established in the Literature that an analysis of this kind does not solve the problem. Recently, new indices have been introduced to evaluate a specific consumer distortion level. In this paper, a comparative analysis of these indices is carried out, having as reference a practical case. The results obtained show that, in fact, these indices can help to valuate the harmonic distortion, although none of them solve the question definitively.