Harmonic Resonance in Power Systems - A
Documented Case
N. Eghtedarpour
Technical office, deputy of transmission
Fars regional electric co.
Shiraz, Iran
eghtedarpour@frec.co.ir
Abstract— Harmonic resonance occurs in a power system when
the power system natural frequency corresponds to the
frequency of a source of harmonic current. This paper studies a
real case of power system harmonic resonance that resulted in
failure of 20-kV capacitor bank fuses. The load current
harmonics are measured and analyzed to investigate the
individual harmonics of the current and then by using the
system impedance frequency characteristic, the voltage
harmonic distortion and the corresponding capacitor current
are determined. Calculation of the power system natural
frequencies are given for various configurations of system shunt
capacitance and results of the power system harmonic current
and voltage on the capacitor fuse blown is studied. The paper
proposes a criterion for the proper size of capacitor to put in
service according to system frequency characteristic and current
harmonics.
Index Terms-- harmonic resonance, system impedance
frequency response, harmonc load flow, capacitor fuse.
I. INTRODUCTION
Shunt capacitors have been utilized for voltage support and
power factor correction as a common practice in the electric
power grids. Every power system has a natural frequency that
is a function of the system reactance and the amount of power
factor correction capacitors connected to the system [1].
Therefore, the installation of shunt capacitors can result in
harmonic resonance and cause an increase in the system
impedance at the corresponding frequency. In the case that a
source of excitation; such as harmonic currents of nonlinear
loads exists with a frequency near or equal to the system
natural frequency, large harmonic voltage distortions can
result due to the occurrence of resonant conditions. With the
increasing spread of harmonic-producing loads such as motor
drives, power electronic converters, electric arc furnaces, …
the possibility of parallel resonance due to shunt capacitors
has become a routine concern for capacitor applications [2]-
[5]. The problems associated with the parallel resonance are
typical of harmonic related heating, including blown fuses,
circuit breaker heating, and unexplained general equipment
failures.
The authors are with Fars regional electric company, Shiraz, Iran
(e-mail: eghtedarpour@frec.co.ir)
978-1-4673-6487-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
857
M.A. Karimi
M. Tavakoli
Technical office, deputy of transmission
Fars regional electric co.
Shiraz, Iran
On August 18, 2013 the Fars power grid experienced an
outage of capacitor bank in a sub-transmission 63/20 kV
substation located in Shiraz suburb. The outage was due to the
blow of the capacitor fuse link. However, after the complete
investigation of the capacitors and test performance there was
no evidence of failure on capacitor units. The possibility that
harmonic resonance had been the cause was considered since
one of the loads on this substation is a steel rolling factory.
This paper studies the cause of capacitor fuse blowing in the
above-mentioned substation. The load current harmonics is
measured and analyzed to investigate the individual harmonics
of the current and then by using the system impedance
frequency characteristic, the voltage harmonic distortion and
the corresponding capacitor current are determined. The fuse
thermal model is then used to realize the cause of fuse blown.
Measuring and simulation results show that capacitor
installation has caused a parallel resonance between 5th and
6th harmonics and due to a relatively high 5th order harmonic
current, the voltage distortion on 5th harmonic has been
occurred. Since the capacitor impedance is smaller for higher
frequency the voltage harmonics causes large amount of
harmonic current to the capacitor and finally thermal
instability in the fuse.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II the effect
of capacitor bank on the impedance frequency characteristic of
the power system and the corresponding harmonic resonance
is described. Section III explains the system configuration and
the frequency sweep studies for different capacitor topology is
illustrated in Section IV. Resonance analysis and harmonic
measurement results are describe in Sections V and VI,
respectively. A criterion also proposed in Section VII for
capacitor installation considering the load current harmonic
distortion. Finally, Section VIII concludes the paper.
II. CAPACITOR BANK AND HARMONIC RESONANCE
In a parallel resonant circuit the inductive reactance and
capacitive reactance impedance components are in parallel to
a source of harmonic current. At this frequency where the
inductive and capacitive reactances are equal, harmonic
resonance occurs and the total effective impedance can be
very high (parallel resonance) depending on the system
configuration and loading [1], [5]. Shunt capacitors which are
commonly installed on the low voltage bus of the sub-
transmission substations, are widely used for voltage support
as well as power factor correction. Installation of capacitor
affect directly to resonance frequency of the system and
sometimes may contribute to harmonic resonance problem.
Fig. 1 shows the Thevenin equivalent circuit of a power
system at the capacitor location. Eth and Z th are the open-
circuit system voltage and the Thevenin equivalent
impedance, respectively. Z th is obtained by frequency scan
study [6]. Parallel resonance occurs when the reactance of X C
and Z th cancel each other out. That can be expressed as
follows [1]:
2
1 1 Rth 1 1
f p ,res. = − ≈
2π Lth C 4 L2th 2π Lth C
III. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
A single line diagram of the studied power substation is
shown in Fig. 2. The system has 63 kV and 20 kV Bus. The
utility supplies power via two 40 MVA wye-grounded/delta
winding transformer. The transformers are also equipped with
two 1200 A earthing transformers. Four 2.4 MVAR fixed
shunt capacitors are installed on the 20 kV Bus that are to be
varied from 2.4 to 9.6 MVAR. A harmonic producing load in
this figure is a steel rolling factory which is modeled as
constant current source. The system fault level at 20 kV Bus is
305 MVA.
IV. RESONANCE ANALYSIS
A well-known and commonly used method to verify if a
capacitor resonates with its supply system is to determine the
ratio of the system fault level to the capacitor size [6] and the
(1) resonance frequency can be estimated from this ratio as
follows,

S s.c.
hres = (5)
Z th = Rth + j hωLth S cap

Where S s.c. is the system short circuit level in MVA and

Eth XC = −j
hω C
Load S cap is the capacitor size in MVA .
Zp

Fig. 1 Power system equivalent circuit at the capacitor location

63 kV
At the resonant frequency, the apparent impedance of the
parallel combination of the equivalent inductance and
capacitance as seen from the harmonic current source becomes
very large, i.e., 20 kV

−j
hωC ( jhωLth + Rth ) (hωLth ) 2
Z p ,res. = ≈ (2) Harmonic
Rth Rth producing
2.4 2.4 loads 2.4 2.4
Since in transmission systems Rth << ω Lth , Z p,res. will MVAR MVAR MVAR MVAR

be very large at the resonance frequency. From (2), it is

realized that during parallel resonance, a small harmonic
current can cause a large voltage distortion at the resonance Inrush limiting
reactor
harmonic,

V bus = Z p , res. I load

h
(3)
res

The current flowing in the capacitor bank would be,

cap bus Lth h

I res = Vres (hres ωC ) = hres ω I (4)
Rth load
It is clear that currents flowing in the capacitor bank will
L
be magnified by the factor th .
Rth
Fig. 2 single line diagram of the studied power substation

858

200
180 6.3,170.5 Ω
7.7,178 Ω
160
5.5,137 Ω 10.7,143 Ω
Impedance (Ohm)
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0 level the current distortion limits are shown in Table I. it can
Harmonic order
Capacitor in service
9.6 MVAR 7.2 MVAR 4.8 MVAR
Fig. 3 system impedance versus frequency as viewed from the 20
kV bus for different capacitor configuartion
Rolling mills operation interval
80 A
60
40
20
0 resistance and also the current distribution effect on current
Fig. 4 1-min average RMS value of the feeder current in a typical workday
Different studies show that this method is too crude to be
practically useful. There is no guarantee that this assumption
is valid for practical interconnected power systems [2], [7].
Furthermore, this method only determines the resonance
frequency and does not evaluate the system harmonic
impedance and one cannot determine the severity of the
resonance. The formula is based on the assumption that the
system harmonic reactance is proportional to its fundamental
reactance determined from the fault level. An alternative to the
above method is to conduct harmonic power flow study and/or
frequency scan study. The harmonic power flow study is too
complicated for this task since the locations of harmonic
sources and the source characteristics are typically unknown.
The frequency scan study [6]–[8] is more useful. It can reveal
the resonance frequencies and the associated magnitudes of
the combined system-capacitor impedance in the frequency
domain. The system frequency response is calculated using
DIgSILENT Power Factory software. The total system
impedance versus frequency plots as viewed from the 20 kV
bus are shown in Fig. 3 for different capacitors configuration.
It shows the presence of a high parallel resonance at 275 Hz.
V. HARMONIC MEASUREMENT INVESTIGATION
The objective of the harmonic measurement investigation
is to determine system harmonic content that would adversely
affect a PFC solution. ION-7650 power quality analyzer is
installed on the suspicious feeder. This device is configured to
calculate and record the maximum individual harmonic
content of the feeder current every 1 minute. The 1-min
average RMS value of the feeder current for one typical
workday is shown in Fig. 4 The measured current maximum
individual harmonic contents are shown in Fig. 5 for
harmonics order up to 9th.
On the other hand, referring to Iran electric industry
standard [9] the current distortion for the customers is limited
according to the size of the customer load demand in relation
No ca pa citor to the short circuit level. The maximum demand of the rolling
steel factory is 3 MW. Therefore, considering the short circuit
be seen that during the operation of rolling mills the feeder
contains large 5th harmonic distortion and over the allowable
range defined by the standard. Considering the current
2.4 MVAR 0 MVAR harmonic distortion and using the frequency response of the
system, harmonic load flow is run to calculate the 20kV Bus
voltage distortion. The load is modeled in correspondence to
the measurement results. The resulted harmonic voltage
distortion due to load current harmonics is shown in Fig. 6.
VI. ANALYSIS OF VOLTAGE HARMONIC DISTORTION ON
CAPACITOR FUSES
The behavior of fuse is affected by two effects [10]:
electromagnetic and thermal. These two effects together,
result in electro-thermal model of the fuse which is the
coupling result of the temperature distribution on fuse
fuse losses and temperature distribution.
In recent research, several models of fuses were developed
[12]-[14], most of them are based on a mathematical
representation of the arc physics. These models include
transient heating and fusion of notched strip elements in sand,
arc ignition, and subsequent burn-back, radial expansion of the
arc channels due to fusion of the sand, merging of adjacent
arcs, and many other second-order effects. Other simulations
have also been done for fuse analysis among them finite
element [11] can be mentioned. Ref.[15] presented thermal
analysis of a medium voltage fuse by means of the finite
element method. The thermal problem in electric fuses has
been studied by different authors. In [11] fuse element is
investigated and its behavior is studied under non-sinusoidal
currents using finite-element method. Different parameters
such as thermal distribution, thermal flux, and electrical
potential in all fuse parts are obtained for non-sinusoidal
currents and the fuse temperature for various THD values is
determined which results in a factor for the fuse that is called
fuse harmonic loss factor (FHLF) in this paper. The FHLF
versus frequency is shown in Fig.7. The figure indicates that
this function is approximately quadratic and can be written as;
FHLF = 0.0004 f 2 + 0.0002 f − 0.013 (6)
Due to the voltage harmonic distortion caused by the
harmonic current of the rolling mills and considering the
capacitor current according to the voltage distortion,
G G
I h = hωV h C (7)
cap
n
G G
I cap = ¦ I cap
h
(8)
h =1
859
 90
80
70
60
50
40
FHLF 30
20
10
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Frequency (Hz)

Fig. 7 FHLF versus frequency

(a)

t
Ploss Ih
n
Ploss
= ¦ FHLF ⋅
I1
= 3.2 (9)

n
where, Ploss is the nominal fuse loss power which causes fuse
melting.
Therefore, the total loss power in the fuse according to the
current distortion is 3.2 times the loss power of the
fundamental current. Each 2.4 MVAR of capacitor bank
consists of 12 units of 200 KVAR capacitors that are protected
(b) partially by expulsion fuses with rated current of 50 A. The
time-current characteristic of the fuse is shown in Fig. 8. It can
Fig. 5 measured current maximum individual harmonic contents in
typical workday, (a) even harmonics, (b) odd harmonics be seen that the fuse will blow after 15 sec for the current of
3.2 I n . Therefore, for the time in which the current distortion
is larger it is highly possible for the fuse to start melting.
TABLE I. CURRENT DISTORTION LIMITS
Clearing
Meltingtime
time(Sec.)
(sec)
Maximum current harmonic distortion in percent of
0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000
maximum demand current (IL)
0
Size of Individual harmonic order n
THD
customer 1 10 100
n<11 11<n<17 17<n<23 23<n<35 n>35 5,000 0

odd even odd even odd even odd even odd even 50
Current (Amps.)

10,000 100
IL/Isc<0.1 15 3.8 7 1.7 6 1.5 2.5 0.6 1.4 0.3 20
150
15,000
200

Voltage Harmonic Distortion in % 250

20,000
7 300
5.8
6
Voltage ha rmonic (%)

25,000
5
4 Fig. 8 Fuse melting characteristic
3
2
1.0
VII. A CRITERION FOR MODIFYING CAPACITOR
1
0.1 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.0
INSTALLATION
0
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 It has been discussed in the previous sections that due to
Ha rmonic order the high current harmonic distortion near the resonance point,
Fig. 6 The resulted harmonic voltage distortion due to load current harmonics the problem of fuse blowing occurred in the substation.
Different methods have been proposed to mitigate this
The capacitor current passes through the fuse, in which the problem by modifying the system impedance frequency
t characteristic. One of the mostly used methods is to change
total loss power ( Ploss ) due to the voltage distortion and the the capacitor size or to move a portion to a different location.
corresponding harmonic currents would be, This section proposes a criterion to study the proper capacitor
size according to current harmonic distortion limits defined by
the standard.

860
 Using the FHLF and Eq. (3), loss power of the fuse for
different load current harmonic distortion can be expressed by, 3

Load HDi5
Standard limit
2.5

h
Ploss (Cω h) Z hp Ih 2
= FHLF ⋅ Id Qc=9.6 Mvar
5
1 I fuse
Ploss 1.5
Qc=7.2 Mvar

Ploss 1
Ploss Qc=4.8 Mvar

I1 (10) 1 Qc=2.4 Mvar

HDih Nocapacitor

= FHLF ⋅ (Cω h) Z hp 0.5

I fuse
0
Id
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Where I h is the load current hth harmonic, I d is the load HD i5

demand current, I fuse is the fuse nominal current and HDih is (a)
th
the h current harmonic distortion. Fig. 9 (a) and (b) show the 8

Load HDi5

Standard limit
fuse loss power relative to the nominal loss power for 5th and 7

7th harmonic distortion of the load current. It can be seen that 6

in the current substation even if HDi5 is on the standard limit, 7

Ploss
5 Qc=9.6 Mvar

Qc=7.2 Mvar
1 4
9.6 MVAR capacitor can result in fuse blown. On the other Ploss
Qc=4.8 Mvar
3
hand, for HDi7 since the resonance occurs for smaller size of
Qc=2.4 Mvar

2 Nocapacitor

capacitor even small current harmonic can cause fuse blown. 1

The discussion shows that in the installation of capacitors it is
required to consider the load harmonic distortion besides the
system frequency characteristic.
VIII. CONCLUSION
A real event in the power system that causes capacitor fuse
blowing in a sub-transmission substation is studied in this
paper. The load current harmonics is measured and analyzed
to investigate the individual harmonics of the current and then
by using system impedance frequency characteristic, the bus
voltage harmonic distortion and the corresponding capacitor
current are determined. It is shown that due to the high value
of impedance at the resonance frequency, a considerable
harmonic voltage distortion could result even for a small value
of harmonic current. This matter causes a relatively large
capacitor current that passes through the fuse and may result
in fuse blown.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
HD i7
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Fig. 9 Fuse Loss power for different load current harmonic distortion
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