2294
4, OCTOBER 2008
Dynamic Harmonic Domain Modeling of Transients
in Three-Phase Transmission Lines
J. Jesus Chavez, Student Member, IEEE, and Abner Ramirez, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a traveling wave based transmis-
sion line model which includes harmonics in transient state. The
line model is interfaced with a nonlinear load and both are simu-
lated through the dynamic harmonic domain technique. This tech-
nique permits the user to follow step-by-step the harmonics of the
propagating waveforms during transient conditions. An illustra-
tive example involving a transmission line network with nonlinear
loads is presented and the proposed model is compared with its
time domain counterpart.
Index Terms—Dynamic harmonic domain, electromagnetic
transients, harmonics, time-varying systems, transmission line,
traveling waves.
I. INTRODUCTION
RANSMISSION lines are usually modeled for transient
T studies either in the frequency domain (FD) or in the time
domain (TD). A partial list of important developments in the line
modeling area is [1]–[8]. In general, the line and its termination
are considered as linear elements. However, the increase of the
use of electronic devices and nonlinear loads in power systems
has produced the necessity of considering also nonlinear termi-
nations in the line modeling.
It is worth noting that, until now, inclusion of nonlinear el-
ements makes FD techniques unattractive. On the other hand,
TD techniques can include in an easy way all type of nonlinear
elements as well as switching devices.
By using any of those techniques (TD or FD if possible),
one can obtain voltage/current transient waveforms as functions
of time. However, a power engineer might be interested in an-
alyzing the harmonic content of such waves, especially when
nonlinear loads or electronic devices are connected to the lines
being analyzed. In this case, a postprocessing is applied to char-
acterize the harmonic behavior during the transient, for instance
by using the windowed fast Fourier transform (WFFT) [9].
In this paper, we model the transmission line based on the
traveling wave approach and combined with the dynamic har-
monic domain (DHD) technique [10]. The latter consists of rep-
resenting a time-varying quantity by a Fourier series, whose co-
efficients are allowed to vary slowly [11], [12]. In the DHD, the
original TD system of ODEs becomes a new system of ODEs in
size larger than the original but containing all the time-varying
harmonic coefficients of the signal under study. This permits to
Manuscript received July 6, 2007; revised October 16, 2007. First published
April 3, 2008; current version published September 24, 2008. This work was
supported by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT-
FOMIXJAL-51689) Mexico. Paper no. TPWRD-00385-2007.
The authors are with the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of
Mexico (CINVESTAV), Guadalajara, Mexico (e-mail: jchavez@gdl.cin-
vestav.mx; abner.ramirez@cts-design.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2008.921133
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO.
follow step-by-step the harmonics behavior along the transient
with accuracy dictated by a predefined number of harmonics and
without the need of a postprocessing procedure. Additionally,
the instantaneous voltage/current waveform can be constructed
(step-by-step) from its corresponding harmonic (Fourier) coef-
ficients which are arranged as DHD vectors. This way, DHD
avoids the well-known errors intrinsically involved in traditional
techniques, such as the WFFT.
It is important to notice that, although FFT-based methods
are accurate and efficient in stationary conditions, they lose ac-
curacy under time-varying conditions, especially for fast distur-
bances. See [13] and [14] for a detailed analysis of such errors,
i.e., leakage, picket-fence, etc.
Potential applications of the proposed technique are in the
areas of power quality studies and analysis of possible ferroreso-
nance conditions. Dynamic power quality indices are calculated
here to illustrate the application of the proposed methodology to
the power quality area. The link between the HD and ferrores-
onance analysis can be seen in [15] and, since it is beyond the
scope of the present work, it is relegated to a future paper.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the basic
definitions of the DHD technique are presented and illustrated
by some examples. Section III describes the DHD modeling of
transmission lines, of nonlinear loads and of their interconnec-
tion. Numerical results are presented in Section IV.
II. DHD BASIC THEORY
A. Basic Theory
In this section, we describe the conversion of an ODE in TD to
the DHD [10], [15]. This will set the basis for the line modeling
which involves ODEs.
Without loss of generality, consider the linear time periodic
(LTP) system for the scalar case
(1a)
(1b)
where subscript stands for time-periodic; for instance, is
defined as
(2)
with representing the highest harmonic and the funda-
mental frequency. By expressing all the variables from (1) by
their Fourier series (with time-varying coefficients), and by re-
moving all the exponential factors, the state representation (1)
in the DHD becomes
(3a)
(3b)
CHAVEZ AND RAMIREZ: DYNAMIC HARMONIC DOMAIN MODELING OF TRANSIENTS IN THREE-PHASE TRANSMISSION LINES 2295

Fig. 1. Time-varying signal with harmonics. Fig. 2. Harmonic dynamics for time-varying signal.

where the variables are now complex vectors (represented by

B. Illustrative Example (Transient Waveform)
bold type letters) with time-varying coefficients, e.g.,
Consider a highly distorted signal, as shown in Fig. 1, given
(4a) by

where denotes the transpose. is called the operational matrix

of differentiation defined by [12] and [16]
(6a)

(4b) where is the power frequency in rad/s and .

By using the DHD theory outlined above, the harmonic vector
and matrix (as well as and ) has the Toeplitz structure corresponding to (6a) (showing only the odd harmonics) is

..
.
.. .. .. .. .. (4c) (6b)
. . . . .
..
.

Note that, in the DHD, we have obtained a system of ODEs From (6b), one can notice that the harmonic coefficients are
of dimension for the general case. The system becomes time dependent.
diagonal when dealing only with linear elements and can further The evolution with respect to time of the coefficients from
be reduced to order when considering half-wave symmetry (6b) is plotted in Fig. 2 by using 1280 points taken here as
(i.e., only odd harmonics). the exact values. Additionally, for comparison purposes Fig. 2
Note also that if (as well as , and ) from (1a) is presents the results yielded by the WFFT. For this example, the
a real coefficient (a nonperiodic quantity), then (4c) becomes a continuous signal given by (6a) is discretized also with 1280
diagonal matrix. points and a sliding window with 128 points (sampling rate of
By comparing (1) and (3) one can observe that the LTP system 7.68 kHz) is used. In order to diminish the leakage error, each
has been transformed into a linear time invariant (LTI) system windowed data is multiplied by the data window by Von Hann
through the DHD. Moreover, the steady state of the system is (also known as Hanning). Notice that the WFFT follows with
easily obtained by setting to zero the derivatives in (3), thus some error the exact values of the harmonic coefficients given
yielding by (6b). The error of the WFFT becomes smaller as the wave-
form settles to steady state, as expected.

(5a)
C. Illustrative Example (Circuit With Nonlinear Load)
(5b)
As a more elaborated example, consider the circuit shown
Hence, the evolution of the harmonic content, i.e., with re- in Fig. 3. It consists of a combination of the source
spect to time, can be obtained from (3) and the corresponding with and , a lumped
instantaneous values are calculated by assembling a Fourier se- parameters transmission line with and
ries as in (2). , and a nonlinear inductance as a load having a current/flux
2296 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2008

Fig. 3. Circuit with nonlinear load.

relation given by . The set of nonlinear ODEs

in the TD for this circuit is (see Fig. 3 for state definitions)

(7)

where (see the equation shown at the bottom of the page).

According to the theory outlined in Section II-A, the DHD
counterpart of (7) is

(8)

where the scalar elements of in the TD have become diagonal

matrices and the nonlinear element (position 4, 5 of matrix )
has become a Toeplitz matrix.
The source in the circuit from Fig. 3 is connected at and
the voltage across the nonlinear load and its harmonic content
are calculated by solving both, the TD set of nonlinear ODEs
Fig. 4. (a) Voltage across nonlinear load and (b) its harmonic content (TD-
and the corresponding set of DHD nonlinear ODEs with . WFFT in dashed line, DHD in continuous line).
The voltage is shown in Fig. 4(a), where we can notice that the
two resultant waveforms (labeled TD and DHD) are superim-
There exists the possibility of using a large time step in the DHD
posed. It should be obvious that the accuracy of the DHD results
(for instance 100 times bigger than in TD) such that the fast-
depend on the number of harmonics included in the modeling
varying characteristics of the transient are passed over leading
(and on the time step). In this specific case, we have taken up
much faster to the steady state of the system. However, Newton-
to 11 harmonics which are the most representative in magnitude
type techniques in the harmonic domain are more appropriate
for the transient and a time step is used for both sim-
for such purposes; see, for instance, [16].
ulations (TD and DHD). The harmonic content of the voltage
is presented in Fig. 4(b), where the accuracy of the DHD, es-
pecially during the transient, is seen superior to the one yielded
III. TRANSMISSION LINE-NONLINEAR LOAD IN THE DHD
by the WFFT. The assembling of harmonics [Fig. 4(b)] via (2)
leads us to the waveform in Fig. 4(a).
For this example, the computational times by the DHD and A. Propagation Equations
the TD-WFFT are 11.5 and 2.5 s, respectively, using a Pentium
IV, 3-GHz, 512-MB RAM. One can notice from Fig. 4(b), how- Consider the reference directions for the three-phase trans-
ever, that the harmonics dynamics resulting from the WFFT are mission line depicted in Fig. 5. The derivation of the propaga-
unacceptable during the transient period. tion equations in the DHD is made by considering a single mode
CHAVEZ AND RAMIREZ: DYNAMIC HARMONIC DOMAIN MODELING OF TRANSIENTS IN THREE-PHASE TRANSMISSION LINES 2297

In (13), corresponds to the identity matrix of dimensions

and the time delay for all harmonics is taken into account
by
Fig. 5. Transmission line reference directions.

(13e)
of the line. Thus, the relations between the incident current, ,
and the reflected current, , for a given mode are One can observe from (12) that the dimension of the TD dy-
namic system (11) has been increased times. Although the
computational advantages of (12) compared to (11) are ques-
(9a) tionable, the former permits us to follow the dynamics of any
harmonic along the observation time. Nevertheless, as the prop-
(9b) agation equations (12) has the same decoupled structure as (11),
the calculation is very fast by using vector-based instead of ma-
where represents the modal propagation function [4].
trix-based operations in Matlab.
Focusing on node , we can approximate by rational
functions [7] and express (9b) as follows:
B. Node Equations
In addition to the propagation equations, we have in the FD
(10a) the terminals relations (see Fig. 5)

In (10a), the set of poles ( poles), obtained from the rational (14a)
fitting, are contained in the diagonal matrix of dimensions (14b)
; the column vector has all entries equal to 1 and
the residues of the realization are contained in the row vector which are now treated in the phase domain. In (14), corre-
. From (10a), we define sponds to the characteristic admittance of the line.
Assuming that the voltage at node is known, the time do-
(10b) main realization for (14a) is ( being fitted with rational func-
tions)
Thus, the corresponding state-space realization for (10b) be-
comes (15a)
(10c) (15b)

Using a similar procedure for node , the state space realiza- with its corresponding DHD counterpart given by
tion for (9a) is straightforward to obtain. Hence, the state space
realization (in the TD) for the two line nodes is (16a)
(16b)
(11a)
where are defined in accordance with (13a)–(13d),
and . The reflected current is then updated with
(11b)
(17)
In (11), the reflected currents and are calculated at time
, being the travel time. In the DHD, (11) becomes Similarly, from (14b), for node , we have in the DHD

(18a)
(18b)
(12a)
For illustration purposes consider a load, consisting of a non-
linear inductance in parallel with a resistance, connected (one
(12b) load per phase) to node of the line (see Fig. 5). The terminal
voltage can be eliminated from (18) by application of Kirch-
Now, in (12), we have the following matrix definitions with hoff’s currents law. First, let us assume that the load current at
corresponding dimensions shown in round parentheses: one phase is given in TD by

(13a) (19)
(13b)
The counterpart of (17) in the DHD is given by
(13c)
(13d) (20)
2298 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2008

In (19), we have assumed a current/flux polynomial relation

for the nonlinear load and the power is related with a convo-
lution operation in (20) (see Appendix A).
Then, assembling the three loads in a single equation and sub-
stituting (20) into (18b) gives

(21)

where . Next, substituting (21) into (18a)

and taking the following DHD voltage/flux relation into ac-
count:

(22)

one obtains the final relations for node as shown in (23a) and
(23b), at the bottom of the page.
Finally, after calculating from (23b), the reflected current
is updated with

(24)

In the case of a network with several transmission lines, the

procedure described above could be used. The incident currents
are calculated for each line using an expression similar to (12).
The solution for each load node can be calculated by using the
nodal elimination as in (23). Finally, the reflected currents are
updated.

IV. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE

A. Harmonic Dynamics
As an example of the proposed model, we present the sequen-
tial closure of a three-phase transmission line with the config-
uration shown in Appendix B. The closing of phases and
is assumed to be at 180 , 120 , and 60 , respectively. At the
receiving end, it is assumed a star-connected nonlinear load.
Fig. 6 shows the phase voltages and currents at the receiving
end of the line. The results from the DHD are compared with
those obtained from the direct simulation of the system of non-
linear equations in the time domain (labeled as TD) using a
predictor-corrector type method for both solutions. Notice from
Fig. 6 that both results (TD and DHD) are superimposed. The
corresponding harmonic content of the voltages and currents
presented in Fig. 6 is shown in Fig. 7.
For this example, we have represented the per phase nonlinear
load (see Appendix A) as a polynomial of order for (17)
and (19) harmonics, positive and negative, are being considered.
It should be mentioned that although the direct time domain
(TD) simulation takes much less time than the DHD, in the
former the observation of the harmonic dynamics would need
an additional processing procedure, such as using WFFT.
Fig. 6. (a) Voltages and (b) currents at receiving end.
B. Frequency Analysis
A further analysis of the waveforms presented in Fig. 7 has
shown that, in addition to the base slow harmonics, mainly
power frequency and third harmonic from the source, also fast
frequencies (not necessarily integer multiples of ) are present.
For instance, Fig. 8 shows the resultant frequency content of the
current waveform from Fig. 7(b) by using the discrete Fourier
transform (done through the command from Matlab).
From Fig. 8, one can notice that the first fast nonharmonic
frequency is about 748 Hz (between the 12th and 13th har-
monic). This corresponds approximately to the frequency given
by , being s the travel time for the 100-km
line [see Fig. 7(b)]. The subsequent fast nonharmonic frequen-
cies are spaced by approximately 1495 Hz, which corresponds
to the first resonant peak of the line admittance (not shown here).

(23a)

(23b)
CHAVEZ AND RAMIREZ: DYNAMIC HARMONIC DOMAIN MODELING OF TRANSIENTS IN THREE-PHASE TRANSMISSION LINES
Fig. 7. Harmonic content at receiving end, (a) voltage phase a and (b) current
phase b.
Fig. 8. Frequency spectrum of current waveform from Fig. 7(b).
In addition to the line oscillations (fast frequencies), the power
frequency oscillations are also clearly seen in Fig. 7.
The results outlined in the preceding paragraph demonstrate
that the DHD has the capability of representing both the har-
monic frequencies due to the source and the nonharmonic fre-
quencies due to the oscillation on the line. The latter cannot
2299
Fig. 9. Apparent power at load phase a.
be represented explicitly in the DHD model; however, the har-
monic coefficients take care of such frequencies by being non-
constant.
C. Power Quality Indices
For the sake of an example, Fig. 9 presents the apparent power
at the load in phase a, yielded by the DHD and calculated by
traditional formulae given for instance in [12]. From Fig. 9, one
can see that the apparent power oscillates according to the line
frequency mentioned above (Section IV-B) and reaching grad-
ually the steady state. A further observation from Fig. 9 is that
the envelope of the waveform presents an approximate second
harmonic oscillation (120 Hz). Further potential applications of
the proposed model to the power quality area, such as the anal-
ysis of disturbances, can be seen in [17].
V. DISCUSSION
A. DHD Versus TD-WFFT
The DHD method leads to a straightforward (and precise)
calculation of the harmonics dynamics regardless the transient
waveform. On the other hand, application of the WFFT (as a
postprocessing procedure) involves choosing the window size,
type of window data, and so on, in order to avoid Gibbs oscilla-
tions and leakage (aliasing). Moreover, fast waveform variations
are difficult to be detected by the WFFT, leading to large errors
during the transient period since its best performance is for sta-
tionary signals.
Although the computational efficiency of the DHD compared
to the use of the combination TD-WFFT is questionable, here it
has been shown that the accuracy (in following the harmonics
dynamics) of the former is superior to the latter, especially for
fast disturbances. Furthermore, the tuning of the WFFT is not a
trivial task, demanding a different tuning for a different transient
[9], [13], [17].
B. Number of Harmonics in DHD
Accuracy of the DHD depends on both, size of the time step
and the number of harmonics. To the best of the authors’ knowl-
edge, in the literature regarding harmonics, there is not a cri-
terion for determining the number of harmonics given a pre-
2300 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2008

defined error and still is a research open topic. Nevertheless,

the knowledge of the harmonic content of the source (or pertur-
bation) and/or the amount of nonlinearity involved, given for
instance by the and coefficients in the polynomial-type
flux/current relation [see (25)] can shade light on such number.
Additionally, the highest harmonic is closely related to the time
step used for the simulation.

C. Size of the System

The applicability of the proposed methodology is for any Fig. 10. Transmission line configuration for the example in Section IV.
system containing linear, nonlinear, and switching devices, as
long as the computational resources permit. For large systems,
we propose to model the internal zone in detail by the proposed where
methodology and representing the external zone as a harmonic
network equivalent.
..
.
.. .. .. .. .. (26b)
. . . . .
VI. CONCLUSION ..
.
In this paper, we have proposed a transmission line model that
includes the dynamic of the harmonics during transient state. It can easily be shown that
The methodology takes aim into the dynamic harmonic domain
which permits to follow step-by-step the harmonic evolution (26c)
with respect to time. It has been observed that the accuracy of the
results from the DHD depends on the truncation of harmonics.
Additionally, it has been shown that the time-varying harmonic
coefficients are capable of representing the nonharmonic line APPENDIX II
frequencies involved during the transient. The validation of the LINE CONFIGURATION
proposed model has been made through the original nonlinear
ODEs in the time domain. The line configuration for the example presented in Sec-
The proposed technique is intended for contributing in the tion IV is shown in Fig. 10. At the sending end of the line, we
study of harmonics in transient state for power quality purposes. have considered a balanced voltage source given by (for phase
Harmonic interaction between transmission lines and FACTS a) with internal parameters
devices is proposed as a future research topic. Additionally, the (resistance and inductance) and mH. The
proposed methodology can be used, where applicable, for vali- line has 100 km length and the ground resistivity is set equal to
dation of FFT-based methods. 100 m. The single-phase nonlinear load has the parameters:
, and and the resistance connected in parallel is
.

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2301
[16] T. Noda, A. Semlyen, and R. Iravani, “Entirely harmonic domain cal-
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J. Jesus Chavez (S’07) received the B.Sc. degree from the University of
Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2003, and the M.A.Sc. degree from the
Center for Research and Advanced Studies of Mexico (CINVESTAV), Guadala-
jara, in 2006. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree at CINVESTAV.
His interests are electromagnetic transient analysis in power systems and the
dynamic harmonic domain applied to electronic devices in power systems.
Abner Ramirez (SM’07) received his B.Sc. degree from the University of Gua-
najuato, Mexico, in 1996, the M.A.Sc. degree from the University of Guadala-
jara, Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree from the from the
Center for Research and Advanced Studies of Mexico (CINVESTAV), Guadala-
jara, in 2001.
He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, from November
2001 to January 2005. Currently, he is a Professor at CINVESTAV. His interests
are electromagnetic transient analysis in power systems and numerical analysis
of electromagnetic fields.