3360 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2011
Electric Arc Furnace Voltage Flicker
Analysis and Prediction
Yu-Jen Hsu, Kuan-Hung Chen, Po-Yi Huang, and Chan-Nan Lu, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Electric arc furnaces (EAF) used in the steel manu-
facturing industry are one of the most disturbing loads that cause
voltage flicker problems in the electric power network. Means for
reduction of voltage flickers by conducting furnace controls, such
as electrode controls, or by adding compensation equipment, such
as power factor corrector and static var compensator, are widely
used in the industry. In order to achieve the best result, an accurate
model for flicker analysis and prediction is essential. In this paper,
a new technique for EAF voltage flicker analysis is presented.
In the proposed method, short-term flicker severity indices, Pst
are analyzed by a nonlinear chaotic technique, in which a phase
(state) space approach is used. Under the reconstructed phase
spaces, Lyapunov exponent patterns in the chaotic trajectory are
observed, and three short-term flicker predictions methods are
developed and tested. The performance of the proposed method
is compared with those of two other time series analysis methods.
Test results indicate that with sufficient flicker measurement data,
a short-term prediction of the flicker severity is achievable. The
information would be useful for remedial controls to reduce dis-
pleasing flicker level caused by an EAF.
Index Terms—Chaos, electric arc furnace (EAF), Lyapunov ex-
ponent (LE), phase space technique, power quality, voltage flicker.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A RC FURNACE operations and the induced voltage flick-
ers are affected by melting materials, melting stage, elec-
trode position, power supply voltage, and system impedance.
The operation procedure begins with loading scrap steel into
the furnace. After preheated with burners, the electrodes are
lowered and energized. In the beginning, the transformer volt-
age is kept low due to instability when arcing to solid scrap. As
the pool of liquid grows, the voltage setting and power level are
increased. Once sufficient scrap has melted, a second or even a
third scrap loading may be added to the furnace [1].
Power quality measurement in steel industry with electric arc
furnace (EAF) is shown in [2]. Analysis of voltage fluctuation
in power networks can be found in [3]. In Taiwan, due to a large
number of arc furnace operations during the off peak hours
(5:00 P. M .–10:00 A . M .), the local power company has requested
customers with arc furnace to reduce voltage flicker level in
order to maintain good power quality for all customers [4]. It is
Manuscript received August 18, 2010; revised December 12, 2010; accepted
March 2, 2011. Date of publication April 25, 2011; date of current version
September 14, 2011. This work was supported by National Science Council
of Taiwan under Project NSC96-2221-E-110-098-MY2. The Associate Editor
coordinating the review process for this paper was Dr. Juha Kostamovaara.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun
Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan (e-mail: hyj6168@cht.com.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2011.2134910
0018-9456/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
shown in [5] that a 55-MW arc furnace in Southern California
Edison system with a 65-MVAR static var compensator
(SVC) could cause fluorescent light flicker to its customers
10–15 miles from the facility. An immediate interim solution
was to restrict the power usage by the arc furnace to less than
40-MW load. This obviously increased the charge melting time
and operation cost.
International Union for Electroheat (UIE) developed a flicker
meter based on two criteria for judging the flicker severity,
Pst and Plt . In IEC 61000-4-15, Pst is used to characterize
the likelihood that voltage fluctuations measured in 10 min
would result in perceptible light flicker and is an indicator
of irritation from flicker [6]–[8]. Flicker severity is dependent
on both the amplitude of the fluctuation and the repetition
rate. It is calculated using percentile values obtained from the
statistical classifier. A Pst of 1.0 represents the level at which
50% of people would perceive flicker in a 60-W incandescent
lamp. The long-term severity index Plt is calculated out of
12 successive Pst values. Planning levels of Plt and Pst are
specified by utilities and standards. EN 50160 defines that the
condition Plt  1.0 should be fulfilled for 95% of the time.
A simple prediction formula for arc furnace flicker at the
point of common coupling (PCC) recommended by UIE is
Pst_99% = Kst · (Sccf /Sccn ), where Sccf is the short-circuit
level of the arc furnace at the PCC. Sccn is the fault level of
the network at the PCC, and Kst is the characteristic emission
coefficient for Pst , ranging from 48 to 85 with a mean value
of 60 [9]. A technique for voltage flicker prediction for two
simultaneously operated ac arc furnaces is presented in [10].
Since EAF are one of the key industrial sources of flicker
in the power network, if displeasing flicker levels are observed
and predictable, then corrective solution could be developed
to mitigate the problems. For factory with large electric fur-
naces, mitigation equipment of sufficient capacity would be
prohibitively expensive. Besides the use of SVC, series reactor
and static compensator, arc voltage regulation controls and
electrode controls are the furnace control means often used by
the industry [11]–[13]. In order to achieve the best performance
of the controls, an accurate analytical model for analyzing
flicker is desirable.
The ability of SVC to reduce the flicker caused by EAFs
and other variable VAr loads depends on their speed, which is
limited by delays in reactive power measurement and thyristor
ignition. In [12], a predictive method is proposed to compensate
the delay time and, hence, to improve the SVC performance.
Previous samples of the load reactive power are used to predict
its future values. Predicted VAr is then applied as a reference
for reactive power compensation.
HSU et al.: ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE VOLTAGE FLICKER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION
Several arc furnace models were proposed to analyze the
flicker problems caused by EAF. Nonlinear resistance and
major harmonic voltage source models are simple but may not
cover the whole range of the characteristics. Current source and
amplitude-modulated voltage source models are also used to
simulate the arc furnace statistically [14], [15]. By analyzing
the current and voltage waveforms from an experimental EAF,
it was proved that arc furnace electrical fluctuations are indica-
tive of a chaotic system [16]–[18]. Lorenz, Chua, and Rossler
chaotic models were tested for dc arc furnace modeling [19].
This paper presents a new technique for arc furnace short-
term flicker severity analysis and prediction. The proposed
method adopts a phase space approach that allows Lyapunov
exponent (LE) calculations. The organization of the paper is
as follows. Section II describes the phase space reconstruction
technique used in this paper. Methods used to determine the
delay time and embedding dimension for constructing the phase
space are given. The LE calculation procedure used to verify
the chaotic behavior of flickers and establish prediction models
is described in Section III. Section IV presents the evaluation
results of one-step-ahead and multi-step-ahead flicker predic-
tions and a performance comparison with two other time series
forecast methods.
II. P HASE S PACE R ECONSTRUCTION
Arc furnace flicker is a nonlinear dynamic system. Phase
(state) space technique is widely used for qualitative and quanti-
tative analyses of a complex dynamic system [20]–[28]. Phase
space is an abstract mathematical space in which coordinates
represent the variables needed to specify the state of a dynamic
system. Phase space reconstruction by time delay embedding
is a method of generating an m-dimensional manifold from the
available measurements that is equivalent to the original man-
ifold [20]–[22]. An observed time series x(i), i = 1, 2, . . . , N
can be embedded in an m-dimensional space by defining the
delay vectors
X(i) = {x(i), x(i + t), . . . , x (i + (m − 1)t)} (1)
where t is the time lag index and m is the embedding dimen-
sion, both of which must be chosen within appropriate ranges.
The phase space reconstruction approach used in this paper is
described in the following.
A. Correlation Integral
Earlier works have proved that arc furnace flicker has chaos
behavior [16]–[19]. Dynamic systems that exhibit chaotic be-
havior often have an attractor in the phase space. Attractors
are typically characterized by a fractal dimension, which is
difficult to compute. But, there is a measure of the dynamic
system, the so-called correlation dimension, which is a good
indicator of a deterministic or random process and is easier to
be computed. Correlation dimension estimation is related to the
relative frequency with which the attractor visits each covering
element. The search for correlation dimensions involves unfold-
ing trajectories in a sufficient space. The correlation integral or
3361
correlation sum of the embedded time series is calculated by
the following equation [23]:
2 
C(m, N, r, t) = H(r−X(i)−X(j)) ,
M (M −1)
1≤i<j≤M
r > 0 (2)
where

0, if a < 0
H(a) = (3)
1, if a ≥ 0
where M = N − (m − 1)t is the number of embedded points
in an m-dimensional space, r is a neighborhood distance,
H is the Heaviside step function, and X(i) and X(j) are
vectors in the phase space, . denotes the Euclidean norm.
The correlation sum counts the number of pairs of delay
vectors that are within an r-neighborhood of each other. If
the limit of C(m, N, r, t) as N → ∞ exists for each r, the
fraction of all state vector points that are within r of each other
may be expressed as C(m, r, t) = limN →∞ C(m, N, r, t),
and the correlation dimension is defined as D(m, t) =
limr→0 (ln C(m, r, t)/ ln(r)) [24]. It was suggested that the
slope of the linear region in the plot of ln C(m, N, r, t) versus
ln(r) can be used as a lower bound measure of the fractal
dimension. Grassberger and Procaccia [23] suggest choosing
the embedding dimension m to satisfy m ≥ 2D + 1.
B. C-C Approach for Determining Embedding Dimension and
Delay Time
The BDS statistic (named after Brock, Dechert, and
Scheinkman) based on the correlation integral was suggested in
[25] to test the null hypothesis that data are independently and
identically distributed (iid). This test has been particularly use-
ful for chaotic systems and nonlinear stochastic systems. Brock
et al. suggest to use the statistic S(m, N, r, t), S(m, N, r, t) =
C(m, N, r, t) − C m (1, N, r, t), as a nonlinear analog of the
serial correlation of a nonlinear time series. This idea is used
in many nonlinear analyses and is called the C-C method.
It can be proved that if a stochastic process {x(i)} is iid,
then C(m, r) = C m (1, r) for all m and r, i.e., the correlation
integral behaves much like the characteristic function of a
serial string in that the correlation integral of a serial string of
independent random variables is the product of the correlation
integrals of component substrings [23]. Thus, S(m, N, r, t) can
be regarded as a measure of nonlinear dependence. For fixed m,
N , and r, a plot of S(m, N, r, t) versus t is a nonlinear analog
of the plot of the autocorrelation function versus t, and it can be
used to determine time lag t for phase space reconstruction.
In order to study the nonlinear dependence and eliminate
spurious temporal correlation, we adopt the suggestion in [24]
to divide the time series {x(i)}, i = 1, 2, . . . , N into t disjoint
time series of size N/t. S(m, N, r, t) is then computed from
the t disjoint time series as follows:
For t = 1, we have a single time series
{x(1), x(2), . . . , x(N )}, and
S(m, N, r, 1) = C(m, N, r, 1) − C m (1, N, r, 1). (4)
3362 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2011

For t = 2, we have the two disjoint time series

{x(1), x(3), . . . , x(N − 1)} and {x(2), x(4), . . . , x(N )}, each
of length N/2, and we average the values of S(m, N/2, r, 1)
for these two series
1
S(m, N, r, 2) = {[C1 (m, N/2, r, 2) − C1m (1, N/2, r, 2)]
2
+ [C2 (m, N/2, r, 2) − C2m (1, N/2, r, 2)]} . (5)

For general t

1
t
S(m, N, r, t) = [Cs (m, N/t, r, t) − Csm (1, N/t, r, t)] .
t s=1
(6)
As N → ∞, we can have
1
t
S(m, r, t) = [Cs (m, r, t) − Csm (1, r, t)] ,
t s=1
m = 2, 3, . . .
For fixed m and t, S(m, r, t) will be identically equal to zero
for all r if the data is iid and N → ∞. However, real data sets
are finite, and the data may be serially correlated; so, in general,
we will have S(m, r, t) = 0. Thus, it was suggested in previous
literature that locally optimal times for independence of the data
are either the zero crossings of S(m, r, t) or the times at which
S(m, r, t) shows the least variation with r. In this paper, we
select representative values rj and define a quantity which is a
measure of the variation of S(m, r, t) with r
ΔS(m, t) = max {S(m, rj , t)} − min {S(m, rj , t)} .
The locally optimal times t are then the zero crossings of
S(m, r, t) and the minima of ΔS(m, t) ∼ t. The zero crossings
of S(m, r, t) ∼ t should be nearly the same for all m and r, and
the minima of S(m, r, t) ∼ t should be nearly the same for all
m (otherwise, the time is not locally optimal). The delay time
τd will correspond to the first of these locally optimal times. To
simplify the computation, appropriate choices for m, N and r
may be found by examining the BDS statistic. Generally, for
m between 2 and 5, and r between σ/2 and 2σ are suggested
in [25], where σ is the standard deviation of the original data
set. In this paper, we choose four representative values r1 =
(0.5)σ, r2 = (1.0)σ, r3 = (1.5)σ, r4 = (2.0)σ, and calculate
their averages
1 
5 4
S(t) = S(m, rj , t)
16 m=2 j=1
Fig. 1. Results of the local minima ΔS(t) and the minimum of Scor (t) are
calculated using the recorded voltage flicker Pst .
for the minimum of the quantity and this optimal time gives the
delay time window τw = t · τs
 
Scor (t) = ΔS(t) + S(t) . (11)
(7)
If the sampling time is τs (e.g., for Pst , τs is 10 min),
then the delay time is τd = t · τs , and the delay time window
is τw = (m − 1) · τd , which is the entire time spanned by
the components of each vector. Fig. 1 shows the changes of
ΔS(t), and Scor (t) calculated based on the measured Pst at
the terminal of the studied EAF. It can be observed in Fig. 1
that at time lag t = 2, there exists the first local minimum of
ΔS(t); thus, τd = t · τs = 2 × 10 = 20 min. The minimum of
Scor (t) occurs at t = 16, τw = t · τs = 16 × 10 = 160 min.
Therefore, to satisfy τw = (m − 1) · τd , the phase space dimen-
sion m can be chosen to be 9. However, studies [24] have shown
(8) that due to data noises and assumptions used in the process
when reconstructing the phase space, it is advisable to test
more combinations that are close to the obtained m and τd , and
satisfy (m − 1) · τd = 160, such as (2,16), (3,8), (4,5), (5,4),
(6,3), (7,3), (8,2), (9,2), etc.
After choosing the embedding dimension m and the time
lag t by the C-C approach, a set of phase space points X(i),
i = 1, 2, . . . , N − (m − 1)t is generated from the original time
series, they can be expressed as
X(1) = [x(1), x(1+t), . . . , x (1+(m−1)t)] ,
X(2) = [x(2), x(2+t), . . . , x (2+(m−1)t ] ,
...
X (N −(m−1)t) = [x (N −(m−1)t) ,
(9) x (N −(m−1)t+t) , . . . , x(N )] .

1 
5 III. LE-BASED F LICKER S EVERITY
ΔS(t) = ΔS(m, t). (10)
4 m=2
We look for the first zero crossing of S(t) or the first local
minimum of ΔS(t) is located to find the first local optimal
time for independence of the data which gives the delay time
τd = t · τs . The optimal time is the delay time t for which
S(t) and ΔS(t) are both closest to 0. If we assign equal
importance to these two quantities, then we may simply look
A NALYSIS AND P REDICTION
From the reconstruction theory, if we can restore the track of
voltage flicker time series characters in the phase space recon-
struction, it is possible to get a mapping X(i + t) = f (X(i)).
The flicker prediction procedure used in this paper consists of
three steps. The first step is to embed the known flicker time
series data from original domain to the phase space domain,
and to calculate LE at each point and the average LE (ALE).
HSU et al.: ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE VOLTAGE FLICKER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION 3363

Next is to predict the unknown phase space points by utilizing

the estimated LE or ALE. Finally, transform the predited phase
space points back to the original domain to obtain the predicted
values.

A. Calculation of ALE
Using the phase space reconstruction technique described in
Section II, for an N data time series, there will be an M =
N − (m − 1)t point trajectory corresponding to the original
time series in the m-dimensional phase space. LE can be used
to delineate the geometry characteristic of the system in phase
space [26]. It is a quantitative measure for distinguishing among Fig. 2. Computation of ALE by repeated rescaling of the distance back to
various types of orbits based upon their sensitive dependence nearby trajectories [28].
on the initial conditions, and is used to determine the stability
of steady-state behavior [21]. Generally, LE can be estimated
either from the motion equation of the studied dynamic system
(if it is known) or from the observed time series. A positive
LE is an indication of chaos in the studied dynamic system
[27]. Considering the nearest neighboring points in phase space
at time zero and at time t, the distances between neighboring
points in the ith direction being δX i (0) and δX i (t),
respectively, then LE is defined as the average growth rate λi
of the initial distance
δXi (t) 1 δXi (t)
= eλi t (t → ∞) or λi = lim ln . (12)
δXi (0) t→∞ t δXi (0)
The rate of separation can be different for different ori-
entations of initial separation vector. Thus, there is a whole
spectrum of LE. As shown in Fig. 2, we find the nearest
neighbor of the initial point, and denote the corresponding
distance between these two points as dL1 (0). Suppose that the Fig. 3. LEM estimation based on weighted one-rank local region approach.
time series is long enough, so that for each state point on the
fiducial trajectory, there exists a neighbor such that dLk (0) < r, x(N + 1)]. For multi-step prediction, each predicted value is
k = 1, 2, . . ., where r is the radius. After one orbital period, the added to the original time series to form a new last point in the
initial length will have evolved to length dL1 (t), which may be trajectory and the process continues for certain steps. Three LE
larger than r. We then replace the nonfiducial data point with estimation methods are used to analyze the chaos trajectory
a point closer to the fiducial point, for which dL2 (0) < r, in and predict x(N + 1). They are described in the following.
nearly the same direction as the original vector. This procedure Method A uses ALE calculated from (13), it is used as a
is repeated until all the points of the trajectory are exhausted. reference for comparison with the following two methods.
The ALE is estimated by Method B uses an advisable LEM calculated according to the
N −1 weighted one-rank local region approach of the states near
1 1  dLi (t) the present state. Fig. 3 shows the idea, where X M is the
ALE = lim ln . (13)
N →∞ N t dLi (0) last point in the trajectory and is considered as the center
i=0
reference point. Let X i , i = 1, 2, . . . , q be the neighboring
points, and the distances between X i and X M be denoted
B. Voltage Flicker Prediction Methods as di , i = 1, 2, . . . , q. And let dmin = min1≤i≤q di , then
For the last vector in the phase space X(N − (m − 1)t), the advisable LEM is calculated from neighboring LEi by
a distance d_0 to the nearest neighbor X(min _d) can be using the following equation:
calculated. Using the estimated LE or ALE, the distance d_1 
q
between X(N − (m − 1)t + 1) and X(min _d + 1) can be LEM = Pi · LEi (15)
computed by i=1

d_1 = d_0 · eLE (or ALE)·t . (14) where

With an estimation of LE, one-step-ahead prediction exp−(di −dmin )

Pi = , i = 1, 2, . . . , q. (16)
x(N + 1) can be obtained from X(N − (m − 1)t + 1), which 
q
exp(di −dmin )
is [x(N − (m − 1)t + 1), x(N − (m − 1)t + 1 + t), . . . , i=1
3364 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2011

Fig. 4. LE at X(N − (m − 1)t − 1) is used to search similar pattern in the

past and to estimate the LE at X(N − (m − 1)t).

Fig. 6. Measurement data at the terminal of an EAF.

Fig. 7. Pst measurements in one particular day.

Fig. 5. One line diagram of a steel plant site with an ac arc furnace.

Method C is an improvement of the method B, which uses the

pattern of two consecutive LE in the trajectory to estimate
the next LE. The idea is depicted in Fig. 4 and (15) is used
to calculate LEM . A few LEi with their previous LEi−1
close to that at X(N − (m − 1)t − 1) in the trajectory
are used to estimate LEM at X(N − (m − 1)t), which
can then be used to calculate X(N − (m − 1)t + 1). The
weightings are determined based the degree of similarity
to LEM−1 , by using a function similar to (16) with the di
replaced by the differences between LEi−1 and LEM−1 .

IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS

One line diagram and specifications of the studied ac EAF
are shown in Fig. 5. The furnace capacity is 155/150/90
(maximum/normal/minimum) tons and the transformer capac-
ity is 25 MVA. Treatment cycle is about 30–45 min. Power-on
time is about 20–35 min. 1 month worth of Pst data recorded by
IEC flickermeter at the EAF terminal are shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 7 Fig. 8. Flow diagram of the prediction procedure.
shows the measured Pst on one particular day. Flicker severity
indices measured at the EAF terminal are high and have abrupt of τd and τw are based on the ΔS(t) and Scor (t) curves as
fluctuations. described in Section II. In the one-step-ahead (10 min) predic-
Fig. 8 shows the flow diagram of the flicker analysis and tion, after the prediction of the next data, the actual measured
prediction procedure. For different data sets, the determination data at the next step is added to the original time series, then
HSU et al.: ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE VOLTAGE FLICKER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION 3365

Fig. 9. Samples of actual data and one-step-ahead prediction results obtained from different data sets and prediction methods. (a) The actual and predictive data
obtained from data set 1. (b) The actual and predictive data obtained from data set 2. (c) The actual and predictive data obtained from data set 3. (d) The actual
and predictive data obtained from data set 4.

the phase space trajectory is extended, and a new LE estimate TABLE I

MAE OF 30 S TEP -A HEAD P REDICTIONS FOR D IFFERENT DATA S ETS
is computed to conduct the following prediction. While in the
multi-step-ahead prediction, predicted data are treated as actual
data without replacement to continue the process until it reaches
the specified step.
Several data sets are used to test the proposed method. Test
results from four data sets each contains 2 weeks worth Pst data
are presented. LE computed in each data set has positive value
which indicates the chaotic characteristics in the measurement
data. Fig. 9 shows the 30 one-step-ahead prediction results. In
this paper, the prediction performance is judged by the mean where yi is the predicted value and xi is the actual measurement
absolute error (MAE) which is defined as value.
Table I shows the MAE of the three methods described in

N Section III. For the four data sets tested, method C provides
|xi − yi |
MAE = (17) better results than methods A and B. As can be seen in Fig. 9
i=1
N and Table II, that in a 30 steps prediction, the average MAE of
3366 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2011

TABLE II
ACCURACY OF D IFFERENT N UMBERS OF O NE -S TEP -A HEAD P REDICTIONS B Y M ETHOD C

Fig. 10. MAE of multi-step-ahead predictions for 15 steps obtained by

method C.

the first few step predictions are much lower than those of the
second half of the series, i.e., if a lower number of prediction
steps is specified, the MAE would be lower.
Table II shows compatible results of the predicted Pst_95%
values with those of actual flicker measurement distributions
in the studied periods if one step ahead prediction is executed.
In Table II, Pst_95% is the arc furnace terminal flicker value at
the 95% level of Pst cumulative distribution of the prediction
period.
Fig. 10 shows a comparison of the results of several one-
step-ahead and different multi-step-ahead predictions. For the
tests conducted, it can be observed that MAE of multiple one-
step-ahead predictions is lower than those of multi-step-ahead
predictions for a same prediction period (e.g., 15 steps). This
indicates that, except some irregular EAF operations, in many
cases, the short-term flicker prediction result is encouraging
and could be useful in mitigation controls. It can also be
observed that as the number of steps increases in one predic-
tion, the prediction results deteriorate gradually, indicating that Fig. 11. Samples of 30 steps predictions results obtained from data sets with
different lengths using method C.
prediction model should be updated periodically using the most
recent measurements. For practical applications, a proper length
of prediction period should be decided based on the desired from MATLAB package. They are the artificial neural net-
performance of the prediction. work (ANN) and auto-regressive integrated moving average
The length of time series required for building the flicker (ARIMA) methods. In the ANN modeling, eight different ver-
prediction model is also investigated. Various data sets with sions of conjugate gradient back propagation training methods
different numbers of data are used. Fig. 11 shows the actual and with and without momentum and adaptive learning rules are
30 one-step-ahead prediction values obtained from method C tested. The input layer has a number of nodes the same as the
based on different length of data for modeling. Table III in- size of data used to build the prediction model C. Different
dicates that the length of data used for model building would numbers of hidden layer nodes are studied and the best pre-
affect the prediction quality and performance. Test results indi- diction results are used for comparisons. In the ARIMA (p,d,q)
cate that, for the flicker measurement data and method used in method, using the same measurement data, models with various
this paper, a data length of 2 weeks is adequate for the purpose. combinations of numbers of autoregressive lags (p), integration
Prediction performance of the proposed method is compared or differences (d) and moving average (q), are built and tested.
with those obtained from two time domain methods available The best prediction results are used for comparisons. MAE
HSU et al.: ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE VOLTAGE FLICKER ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION 3367

TABLE III
ACCURACY OF 30 O NE -S TEP -A HEAD P REDICTIONS T ESTED ON
DATA S ETS W ITH D IFFERENT L ENGTHS

TABLE IV
MAE OF 30 O NE -S TEP -A HEAD P REDICTIONS F ROM
D IFFERENT M ETHODS

Fig. 12. 100 data generated by the discrete logistic equation (when μ is 4).

of 30 one-step-ahead predictions are shown in Table IV. As

those shown in Figs. 6 and 7, the arc furnace voltage flickers
exhibit irregular and non-periodic chaos behavior that could
not be easily predicted. Test results indicate that the C-C-based
approach could construct a phase space that allows a good
representation of the underlying dynamic system. For the cases
tested, the proposed method C seems to provide better results
than the ANN and ARIMA models tested.
In this paper, up to 30 steps predictions, the computation
time required by the proposed method is less than 1 min on a Fig. 13. The actual and predictive data based on a time series generated by
Duo CPU @3.00 GHz and 3.25-GB RAM computer. Since it is the discrete logistic equation.
lower than 10 min that is required by a flickermeter to generate
one Pst , the proposed method is suitable for online applications.
In order to further address the issue of general applicability perform flicker predictions. Based on the Pst data used in this
of the proposed prediction method, additional test results based paper, LE patterns observed in the phase space can be used to
on a chaotic dynamic system generated from the discrete logis- build the prediction models. Prediction performance assessment
tic equation (xi+1 = μ · xi (1 − xi ), i = 0, 1, 2, . . . , 0 < xi < is based on multiple data sets recorded at different operation
1), are shown in the Appendix. Test results confirm that using periods, and investigation is conducted to determine adequate
the data generated by the discrete logistic equation with μ set data length required for modeling. Tests conducted in this paper
to 4.0, a short-term prediction of the chaos system is achievable have revealed encouraging results in arc furnace voltage flicker
by using the proposed method. Refer to Appendix for details. predictions. Compared to two other time domain methods, the
proposed method has demonstrated an effective capability in
short-term flicker severity index predictions. Experiences show
V. C ONCLUSION
that strict analyses of the phase space reconstruction attributes
A nonlinear chaotic technique is proposed in this paper to and data sufficiency in building the prediction models are
analyze the arc furnace short-term flicker severity data and important for online EAF control applications.
3368 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2011

A PPENDIX
Using the discrete logistic equation, (xi+1 = μ · xi (1 −
xi ), i = 0, 1, 2, . . . , 0 < xi < 1), one hundred data shown in
Fig. 12 are generated to set up the prediction models and
additional data are also generated for performance testing.
Fig. 13 shows the actual and 50 one-step ahead prediction
values obtained from the three prediction methods tested in
this paper. It can be seen from Fig. 13 that for this chaotic
dynamic system, a short-term prediction is achievable by using
the proposed method. It shows that if the same prediction model
is used for a longer time period without model update (by
using the most recent new data), higher errors could be found
at the later steps. Similar to the test results obtained from Pst
measurements, Fig. 13 indicates that methods B and C provide
better and longer predictions than the method using average LE
(method A).
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