Notes on Symmetric Components

We shall assume that we are given a set of three phase voltages V a , V b and V c which are not
balanced (i.e. the phase angle difference between the voltages is not +/- 120 degrees, and the voltage magnitudes are not equal.
We wish to use sequence voltages to represent the three phase voltages. There are three kinds of
sequence voltages, each having three components:
Zero Sequence Voltage: Three AC voltages that are in phase with each other and have the
same magnitude. They are designated V a0 , V b0 and V c0 (note that there are three separate AC
voltages which are equal in magnitude and phase).
Positive Sequence Voltages: Three AC voltages that are separated by 120 degrees, have the
same magnitude, and are in positive order (sequence) of a,b,c,a,b,c, ... They are designated
V a1 , V b1 and V c1 .
Negative Sequence Voltages: Three AC voltages that are separated by 120 degrees, have the
same magnitude, and are in negative order (sequence) of a,c,b,a,c,b, ... They are designated
V a2 , V b2 and V c2 .

We now have a total of nine AC voltages to represent one set of unbalanced three phase voltages
as follows:

V a = V a0 + V a1 + V a2
V b = V b0 + V b1 + V b2
V c = V c0 + V c1 + V c2
We do not need to use all nine voltages, however, since there is a simple phase relationship
between the components. Instead of using nine different voltages, we shall use only three making
use of the phase relationships. We choose to base all the sequence components on the three
sequence components associated with phase a, namely V a0 , V a1 and V a2 by making use of the
phase relationships as follows:

V b0 = V a0
1

V b1 = V a ( 1 240deg ) = V a1 a 2
V b2 = V a2 ( 1 120deg ) = V a2 a
where: a = 1 120 and a 2 = 1 240
finally for phase c:

V c0 = V c0
1

V c1 = V a ( 1 120deg ) = V a1 a
V c2 = V a2 ( 1 240deg ) = V a2 a 2
Then we express the three phase voltages in terms of the three phase a sequence voltages as follows:

Va

1 1 1

Vb = 1 a 2 a
Vc

V a0

V a0

V a1 = A V a1

1 a a2 V 2
a

V a2

The a in the above equation is dropped for ease of writing the equations resulting in:

Va

1 1 1

Vb = 1 a 2 a
Vc

V0

V0

V1 = A V1

1 a a2 V2

V2

The true phase b and phase c sequence voltages can be obtained by using the same phase relations
used at the top of this page.