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Influence of instrument transformers on harmonic distortion assessment

Conference Paper · July 2012

DOI: 10.1109/PESGM.2012.6345309

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Influence of Instrument Transformers on
Harmonic Distortion Assessment
T. Pfajfar, J. Meyer, Member IEEE, P. Schegner, Senior Member IEEE, I. Papič, Senior Member IEEE
Abstract—Determination of harmonic emission levels is
becoming a very important task in power distribution networks.
Accurate measurements of harmonic voltages and currents are
extremely important for correct evaluation of harmonic
emissions. Voltages and currents in MV and HV networks are
usually measured by the instrument transformers but the
accuracy of these transformers for frequencies above their rated
frequency is usually not known. The paper presents the behavior
of the voltage and current instrument transformers at higher
frequencies (above 50 Hz or 60 Hz). The harmonic magnitude
and phase angle measurements errors are evaluated. At the end
the impact of the measurements errors on the harmonic emission
levels calculation is discussed.
Index Terms—Instrument transformers, measurement errors,
harmonic emission level.
I. INTRODUCTION
P roper determination and quantification of harmonic
emission levels helps to restrain harmonic distortion in
power networks. Within the IEC, a new Technical Report
61000-3-6 [1] was prepared and basic guidelines on the
assessment of the harmonic emission levels are provided.
Presented techniques are in many cases complex and difficult
to use in practice. On the other hand methods rely on
measured quantities and directly depend on the measurement
accuracy.
Network operators, customers and regulators carry out
more and more measurements that can be used for harmonic
emission level determination. Usually measurement
equipment with high accuracy (e.g. according to IEC 61000-
4-30 [2] class A) is used. The easiest way to connect the
measurement equipment in medium voltage (MV) and high
voltage (HV) networks is using conventional instrument
transformers. While accuracy at rated frequency (50Hz/60Hz)
is defined by standards, information about their behavior at
higher frequencies is usually not available. This may lead to
measurement errors in ratio and phase angle at higher
frequencies. These errors can e.g. influence the accuracy of
harmonic power calculations or lead to unreliable results in
T. Pfajfar is with Reinhausen 2e Ltd., a spin-off company of the University of
Ljubljana, Slovenia (e-mail: tomaz.pfajfar@2-e.si).
J. Meyer is with Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany (e-mail:
meyer@ieeh.et.tu-dresden.de).
P. Schegner is with Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany (e-mail:
peter.schegner@tu-dresden.de).
I. Papič is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia (e-mail: igor.papic@fe.uni-lj.si).
978-1-4673-2729-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
1
case of verifying compliance with standards. Usually the used
measurement equipment has a high accuracy and therefore
instrument transformers become a significant influence on the
total accuracy of the harmonic measurements. Consequently
the accuracy of the calculated harmonic emission levels could
be questionable or insufficiently reliable to be used in some
kind of incentive-based policy for harmonic emission levels.
In the paper the behavior of the instrument transformers at
frequencies above their rated frequency is presented and the
impact of the measurement error on the harmonic emission
levels is discussed.
II. ACCURACY OF INSTRUMENT TRANSFORMERS
IEC 61000-4-30 defines accuracy requirements for the
measurement equipment only. It explicitly excludes the
instrument transformers accuracy. The relevant standards (IEC
61869 / IEC 60044) do also not define accuracy limits for
frequencies other than the rated frequency in their recent
editions. Therefore it is at the moment not possible to specify
an overall accuracy for harmonic measurements in general.
However the interest in accurate harmonic measurements
increases for all involved parties (distribution network
operators, equipment certifiers, regulators, etc.). More and
more requests to instrument transformer manufacturers and
standardization bodies confirm this trend. IEC TC38 / AHG41
has almost finished the work on a technical report covering
the accuracy of instrument transformers for power quality
measurements including harmonics.
Technische Universitaet Dresden/Germany started several
projects dealing with the frequency dependent behavior of
voltage transformers (VT) and current transformers (CT) to
obtain reliable information about their frequency-dependent
behavior and to quantify their influence on the total accuracy
of harmonic measurements, especially for MV and HV
networks. Several test setups were considered to obtain an
efficient measurement method that represent typical operating
conditions as best as possible. The test setups are discussed in
detail in [3, 4]. The investigations result that a single-frequent
sweep is the best way to measure the frequency response.
Each sweep starts at a predefined frequency. The frequency is
stepwise increased and the step size changes adaptively. By
this adaptive step control even small resonances are measured
with a sufficient frequency resolution while measurement time
is optimized. At the moment a new method based on mixed
frequency signals is investigated. That method increases the
measurement speed again significantly.
 2

4 180
normalized ratio nr(f) →

phase angle diff. Δφ /° →

3
90

2
0

1
-90

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 -180
frequency f / kHz → 0 1 2 3 4 5
frequency f / kHz →
Fig. 1. Normalized transformer ratio nr(f) for 66 kV VT (green), 110 kV Fig. 2. Phase angle difference Δϕ(f) for 66 kV VT (green), 110 kV
combined transformer (blue) and 220 kV VT (red). combined transformer (blue) and 220 kV VT (red).

For each frequency a normalized transformer ratio nr(f) voltage, manufacturing tolerances, design type, ...)
and a phase angle difference ∆ϕ(f) are calculated according to b) Operational-specific influences (e.g. type and value
the equations (1a, 1b) and (2). of burden, operating temperature, ...)
U sec ( f ) / U pri ( f ) c) Test-signal specific influences (e.g. feeding
nr ( f ) = (1a) direction and magnitude of test signal, ...)
(U sec / U pri ) rated
The sensitivity of the frequency-dependent behavior on the
I sec ( f ) / I pri ( f ) mentioned parameters, is especially but not exclusively at the
nr ( f ) = (1b)
( I sec / I pri ) rated resonance points very high. There for it is not possible to
compensate the harmonic measurement error of a VT based on
Δϕ ( f ) = ϕ sec ( f ) − ϕ pri ( f ) (2) a reference curve provided by the manufacturer for the full
spectrum.
A more robust proposal for the accuracy specification of
A. Voltage transformers VTs for measuring purposes is based on a threshold frequency
(called critical frequency fcrit in the further text). Up to this
The frequency-dependent behavior of the normalized
frequency the VT provides a specified accuracy. While the
transformer ratio and the phase angle difference show
measurement error of phase angle directly results from
distinctive resonance points and may vary significantly
equation (2), the measurement error of normalized transformer
between VTs of different types (Fig. 1, Fig. 2).
ratio, which directly corresponds to the magnitude accuracy, is
Characteristics of the frequency-dependent behavior as
calculated according to equation (3) and is called transformer
well as location and rise of resonance points depend on a
ratio accuracy [5].
complex system of influencing factors that can be classified as
follows: nr ( f ) − nr ( f r )
Δnr ( f ) = (3)
a) Construction-specific influences (e.g. rated primary nr ( f r )

15 400

10 EHV
300
5
Δnr(f) /% →

Upri / kV

0 200
critical frequencies fcrit
-5 HV
10 %
1%
2%

5%

100
-10

-15 MV
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0
frequency / kHz → 0 1 2 3 4 5
critical frequency f crit / kHz
Fig. 3. Transformer ratio accuracy ∆nr(f) with different accuracy Fig. 4. Critical frequencies fcrit of transformer ratio accuracy Δnr(f) = 1%
thresholds and corresponding critical frequencies fcrit for all analyzed VTs
 3

15 15

10
Δnr(f) / % →

10

Δφ(f) / ° →
5 5

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
critical frequency fcrit / kHz → critical frequency fcrit / kHz →
Fig. 5. Critical frequencies for different transformer ratio accuracies and all Fig. 6. Critical frequencies for different phase angle accuracies and all
measured 66-kV-VTs (blue) and 123-kV-VTs (black) measured 66-kV-VTs (blue) and 123-kV-VTs (black)

0.99 5
0.97
0.95
0

δ i in ° →
0.93
nr →

-5
0.91
0.89
-10
0.87
0.85 -15
25 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 25 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
f in Hz →
f in Hz →
Fig. 7. Normalized transformer ratio nr(f) for an MV CT (solid - pure Fig. 8. Phase angle difference for an MV-CT (solid - pure resistive burden;
resistive burden; dashed - resistive/inductive burden) dashed - resistive/inductive burden)

measurements up to the 37th harmonic can be used for further

Fig. 3 illustrates the definition of the critical frequency fcrit
by an example. For the transformer ratio accuracy shown in
Fig.3 up to f = 400Hz the VT has an accuracy better than 1%.
Fig. 4 shows the critical frequencies fcrit (measurement
accuracy Δnr(f) ≤ 1 %) for more than 100 VTs that was
measured within several projects over the last years. With
increasing rated primary voltage the critical frequency
decreases significantly. Due to e.g. the different design the
critical frequency varies in a large frequency range, even in
case of equal rated primary voltage.
IEC 61000-3-6 defines planning levels for low-frequency
harmonics up to the 50th order, which means 2.5 kHz for
50 Hz networks and 3.0 kHz for 60 Hz networks respectively.
Fig. 4 shows that only all measured 10-kV-VTs as well as a
few 20-kV- and 66-kV-VTs meet the 1-%-accuracy up to
those frequencies. For the analyzed 110-kV-VTs the critical
frequency fcrit ranges from 413Hz (8th harmonic) to 1010Hz
(20th harmonic).
Fig. 5 shows the critical frequencies for different
transformer ratio accuracies. The critical frequencies of 110-
kV-VTs are generally lower compared to the 60-kV-VTs. The
measured worst case frequency for a 10-%-accuracy is
1180Hz, which is 3 times the frequency for 1-%-accuracy.
Fig. 6 shows the critical frequencies for different phase
angle accuracies. If e.g. a measurement error of 10° is
acceptable, based on the measured 110-kV-VTs harmonic
analyses. For the measured 60-kV-VTs any assessment
according to 61000-3-6 that relies on phase angle accuracy not
better than 5° is possible, because the critical frequencies are
higher than 3 kHz.
Nowadays a fast increase of components, which emit
higher frequencies mainly caused by self-commutating circuit
topologies (e.g. PV inverters, active PFC circuits) can be
observed. The switching frequencies range from several kHz
up to several 10 kHz. Conventional VTs are in general not
suitable for measurements in this higher frequency range.
Accurate voltage measurements at those frequencies in MV,
HV and EHV (extra high voltage) networks therefore need
different sensor technologies.
B. Current transformers
Up to now in a first project CTs for MV networks were
analyzed [6]. However the general findings apply for CTs for
low voltage (LV) networks as well. CTs for higher voltage
levels will be measured in the near future. Compared to VTs
the frequency characteristics of the analyzed CTs do not show
any distinctive resonance points below 10 kHz (Fig.5).
Fig. 7 and 8 show a significant influence of the burden
type. Pure resistive burdens do virtually not affect the
frequency-dependent characteristic, but even a small part of
inductive burden leads to high errors at increasing
frequencies.

Fig. 9. Harmonic emission vectors.
Fig. 10. Thevenin equivalent circuit.
Therefore, the secondary circuit should be low inductive,
including the connection cables. To gain repeatable
measurement results, it is important to pay attention to EMC
problems that may occur.
III. HARMONIC VOLTAGE EMISSION LEVEL CALCULATION
BASED ON VOLTAGE AND CURRENT PHASORS
Harmonic emission level calculation is directly influenced
by the measurement errors of instrument transformers. IEC
61000-3-6 defines the harmonic emission level as the
magnitude of the harmonic voltage phasor at each harmonic
frequency, which is caused by the considered installation at
the point of evaluation. The point of evaluation POE can be
the point of common coupling (PCC) or the point of
connection POC [1] or any other point specified by the system
operator. The proposed definition of the harmonic emission
level is illustrated in Fig. 9, where Ehc presents the voltage
emission phasor at a particular harmonic order h, Eh0 the
phasor of the background harmonic voltage and Uh the
harmonic voltage at the POE.
The harmonic voltage emission level, in particular the
harmonic voltage emission phasor, is therefore the difference
between the harmonic voltage before and after the considered
installation/customer is connected to the network. The
calculation of the harmonic voltage emission levels is based
on the Thevenin equivalent circuit as shown in Fig. 10. This
equivalent circuit represents the customer and the utility side,
with the harmonic sources (Ihc, Eh0), customer impedance Zhc
and reference value of the network impedance Zh-ref at a
particular harmonic order h. The current phasor Ih and the
voltage phasor Uh are measured at the POE. If the network
impedances are known, the background harmonic voltage
phasor Eh0 can be calculated directly from the measured
voltage and current at the POE by equation (4).
E h 0 = U h − I h ⋅ Z h − ref . (4)
As determination of the actual harmonic impedances can be
4
very difficult task, reference values can be used for network
impedances. The reference impedances can be calculated from
the network data or can be a subject of contractual agreement.
Simplified impedance at a certain harmonic can be calculated
based on the minimum short-circuit impedance however no
resonance conditions are considered in such case and actual
impedance can differ significantly from the reference value.
The voltage Eh0 presents the harmonic voltage phasor
before the considered installation or customer is connected to
the network, while the measured voltage Uh presents voltage
conditions after the customer is connected. The customer
harmonic voltage emission level can be calculated with (5):
E hc = U h − E h 0 = I h Z h − ref . (5)
In the IEC 61000-3-6, harmonic emission is taken into
consideration, if and only if the resulting phasor Uh has a
greater magnitude than the background voltage Eh0.
U h > E h0 . (6)
The harmonic emission level is defined as follows:
E hc = I h Z h − ref . (7)
An advantage of this approach is that it does not require
any information about the customer. It also does not require
any information about the actual network impedances (use of
reference impedances). In addition no harmonic phase angle
information is required to calculate voltage harmonic emission
level. This is an advantage as the phase angle measurements
are subject to measurement errors especially at higher
frequencies, as presented in the first part of the paper.
However, the criteria that defines, when the customer
harmonic emission level is considered (6), is strongly related
to the magnitude and phase angle measurement accuracy as
the calculation of the background voltage (4) is based on
measured voltage and current phasors.
IV. IMPACT OF VT AND CT MEASUREMENT ERRORS ON
HARMONIC EMISSION LEVEL CALCULATION
A. Impact of the harmonic magnitude measurement error
The voltage harmonic emission level is defined as the
product of the harmonic current magnitude and the harmonic
network impedance. Consequently the magnitude
measurement errors of the CTs have direct impact on the
accuracy of the calculated harmonic voltage emission level.
According to [1] harmonic emissions are taken into
consideration only if the resulting measured voltage Uh has a
greater magnitude than the background voltage Eh0. This
indicates that VT measurement errors can influence the
harmonic emission results indirectly. The customer emissions
could be mistakenly considered if, due to the magnitude
measurement error, the measured voltage |Uh| is greater than
the background voltage |Eh0|.
 5

B. Impact of the harmonic phase angle measurement error

The phase-angle measurement error influences the results
of many methods for calculating harmonic emission limits.
For example, the error can result in an incorrect determination
of the harmonic power flow, especially if the phase angle
between the voltage Uh and the current Ih is close to 90
degrees [7].
The sensitivity of the method discussed above to the
measurement errors in the phase angles was investigated and
the results are presented in Fig. 11 and Fig. 12. The studied
simple network model is represented in Fig. 10. The customer
load is defined as |Z1c|=400 Ω, cosφZ1c=0.95 at 20 kV. The
harmonic current source produces 5th-order current harmonic.
On the utility side, the voltage source produces a 5th-order
voltage harmonic. The customer’s current harmonic source
phase angle is varied from 0 to 360º. The phase angle of the
utility voltage harmonic source is set to 0º. The magnitude of Fig. 11. Effect of phase-angle measurement error on the calculated
the utility harmonic source is |E50|=115 V and the customer background voltage.
current harmonic source |I5c|=5 A. Only the voltage harmonic
emission levels are studied and presented in this paper. For the
purpose of this study, it was presumed that the utility
reference impedance is equal to |ZU1-ref|=1.27 Ω, cosφZU1-ref
=0.1 (HV/MV supply transformer: S=31.5 MVA, U=20 kV,
uk=10 %, R/X=1/10). The error of the phase angle between the
voltage and the current at the POE varies from -5 to +5
degrees.
The customer’s harmonic emission level is defined with the
absolute values of the harmonic current and network
impedance therefore the phase angle measurement error has
no direct impact to customer harmonic emission levels.
However the criteria when the customer harmonic emission
levels is considered (|Uh|>|Eh0|) is influenced by the phase
angle measurement errors, because the calculation of the
background voltage is based on measured voltage and current
phasors. Fig. 11 presents dependency of the calculated
background voltage from the harmonic phase angle Fig. 12. Measurement error for the studied case.
measurement error (in percentage of the measured voltage).
The difference between the background voltage Eh0 and the According to IEC 61000-3-6, the magnitude of the
measured voltage Uh deviates more from the correct values if customer’s harmonic voltage emission vector is defining the
the phase-angle error increases. For the studied case the emission level. The magnitude measurement accuracy of the
maximal magnitude error of the background harmonic voltage CTs has direct impact to the customer harmonic emission
phasor due to the phase-angle measurement error can be level calculation. The phase angle measurement errors do not
determined to ±0.56 % at ±1º error (Fig. 12) or roughly directly impact the customer harmonic emission level
estimated to less than ±1 % at ±1º error. For the studied case calculation, but can influence the criteria when the customer
the presented method (acc. to IEC 61000-3-6) is therefore emission level has to be considered.
relatively robust to measurement errors in the harmonic phase The analysis for the given case showed that such approach
angles. is relatively robust for the harmonic phase angle measurement
errors. In order to provide more general conclusions, a
V. CONCLUSIONS detailed analysis of parameter variation is required. This will
The paper discussed the behavior of the voltage and current be the subject of further investigation.
transformers at the frequencies above 50 Hz or 60 Hz. VTs
show distinctive resonance points at which a magnitude error VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
of more than 200% and phase angle errors of more than 100° The authors wish to thank RITZ Instrument Transformers
compared to the accuracy at rated frequency may be possible. GmbH (Germany) and PFIFFNER Instrument Transformer
CTs usually perform better, but care should be taken for Ltd. (Switzerland) for supporting the project.
circumstances were inductive parts of burden are probable.

VII. REFERENCES
[1] IEC 61000-3-6, Ed. 2: Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), Part 3:
Limits, Section 6: Assessment of harmonic emission limits for the
connection of distorting installations to MV, HV and EHV power
systems, Technical Report, August 2010.
[2] IEC 61000-4-30: Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) - Part 4-30:
Testing and measurement techniques - Power quality measurement
methods, www.iec.ch.
[3] M. Klatt, J. Meyer, P. Schegner, M. Elst: “Frequency Responses of MV
voltage transformers in the range of 50 Hz to 10 kHz”, International
Conference on Harmonics and Quality of Power (ICHQP),
Bergamo/Italy, 2010.
[4] J. Meyer, R. Stiegler, M. Klatt: ”Accuracy of Instrument Transformers
for Voltage Harmonic Measurements”, OMICRON Instrument
Transformer Measurement Forum (ITMF), Brand/Austria, 2011.
[5] R. Stiegler, J. Meyer, M. Elst, E. Sperling: "Accuracy of harmonic
Voltage Measurements in the Frequency Range up to 5 kHz using
Conventional Instrument Transformers", 21st International Conference
on Electricity Distribution (CIRED), Frankfurt/Germany, 2011.
[6] C. Henze, M. Reiß, P. Schegner: " CT’s for Measurements of Current
Harmonics in MV Networks", OMICRON Instrument Transformer
Measurement Forum (ITMF), Brand/Austria, October 2011.
[7] W. Xu, X. Liu, Y. Liu, “An Investigation on the Validity of Power-
Direction Method for Harmonic Source Determination,” IEEE Trans.
Power Delivery, vol. 18, pp. 214-219, Jan. 2003.
VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Tomaž Pfajfar received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, all in electrical
engineering, from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2004 and 2009,
respectively. From 2004 to 2009 he has been a researcher at the Faculty of
Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana. In 2006 he was with Arsenal Research
Distributed Generation Group in Vienna, Austria.
Currently he is the head of R&D department in Reinhausen 2e Ltd., a spin-
off company of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests
include power quality, distributed generation and active network operation.
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Jan Meyer studied Electrical Power Engineering at the Technische
Universität Dresden (Germany). He received the Ph.D. with a thesis on the
statistical assessment of power quality in distribution networks.
Now he is a senior academic assistant at Technische Universitaet Dresden.
His research interests include network disturbances (especially harmonics) as
well as all aspects of the design of power quality measurement campaigns
from selection of measurement sites to advanced statistical analysis methods.
One of these aspects is i.a. the accuracy of VTs for harmonic measurements.
He is member of several national and international working groups dealing
with network disturbances.
Peter Schegner studied Electrical Power Engineering at the Darmstadt
University of Technology (Germany), where he received the Dipl. Ing. After
that he worked as system engineer in the field of power system control and
became a member of the scientific staff at the Saarland University (Germany),
receiving the Ph.D. with a thesis on the earth-fault distance protection. Then
he worked as head of the development department of protection systems at
AEG, Frankfurt A.M., Germany. Later he became a full Professor of Electrical
Power Systems at the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany).
Igor Papič received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, all in electrical
engineering, from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1992, 1995 and
1998, respectively.
Currently he is a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in
Ljubljana. In 2001 he was a visiting professor at the University of Manitoba in
Winnipeg, Canada. His research interests include power quality, power system
simulations, control and modeling of FACTS devices and Power Conditioners.