970
2, APRIL 2005
Power System Harmonic Analysis Using
State-Estimation Method for Japanese Field Data
Norikazu Kanao, Member, IEEE, Mitsunori Yamashita, Hikoni Yanagida, Munehisa Mizukami,
Yasuhiro Hayashi, Member, IEEE, and Junya Matsuki, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The harmonic state-estimation (HSE) method ap-
pears to be effective but its applicability has yet been fully verified
using actual data in power systems. Particularly in Japan, there
has been no verification of the applicability of the method in actual
power systems. In this paper, for Japanese field data synchronized
with a Global Positioning System (GPS) clock, a practical method
for power system harmonic analysis is proposed, which is based on
HSE. In the proposed method, in order to improve the precision
of HSE, uncertain parameters R, X, and Y of the transmission
lines are determined from measured fundamental data, and
bad measured harmonic data excluded systematically. It is also
possible to estimate the error of each measurement instrument by
using HSE. It is confirmed that by using only partial and selected
measurement data synchronized with a GPS clock, the entire har-
monic distribution of the actual power system has been obtained
effectively. In this paper, field-test results of the HSE on an actual
Japanese power system are shown. Furthermore, an example of
harmonic analysis based on HSE in the actual power system is
presented, which is prediction of harmonic voltage distribution
after a change of the actual power system configuration.
Index Terms—Global positioning system, least-squares methods,
measurement error, power system harmonics, state estimation.
I. INTRODUCTION
W ITH the widespread use of power electronic equipment,
many inverters have been built into devices, and har-
monics arising from them are injected into the power system and
distributed over the entire system. Due to the harmonics, their
influence on power quality due to damage by voltage distortion
is of concern. Thus it is important to determine harmonic distri-
bution precisely. In a bulk power system, a large-volume ac/dc
conversion facility that utilizes power electronics technology is
introduced, so that it is important to avoid unstable operation of
the facility by the overloading of an alternating current filter due
to the distribution of harmonics.
Thus far, in order to determine the distribution of harmonics
in a power system, several methods have been proposed [1]–[4].
Manuscript received June 5, 2003; revised November 14, 2004. Paper no.
TPWRD-00288-2003.
N. Kanao and M. Yamashita are with the Engineering Research and Devel-
opment Center, Hokuriku Electric Power Company, Toyama 930-0848, Japan
(e-mail: n.kanao@rikuden.co.jp; yamashita.mi@rikuden.co.jp).
H. Yanagida is with Ishikawa Control Center, Hokuriku Electric Power Com-
pany, Ishikawa 920-1304, Japan (e-mail: yanagida.hikoni@rikuden.co.jp).
M. Mizukami is with the Power System Management Department, Hokuriku
Electric Power Company, Toyama 930-8686, Japan (e-mail: mizukami.mune-
hisa@rikuden.co.jp).
Y. Hayashi and J. Matsuki are with the Department of Electrical Systems,
Fukui University, Fukui 910-8507, Japan (e-mail: hayashi@fuee.fukui-u.ac.jp;
matsuki@fuee.fukui-u.ac.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2004.838632
0885-8977/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO.
One is a method using a Kalman filter or harmonic power flow
with a least squares estimator, and another is the state-estimation
method with Global Positioning System (GPS) to reduce the in-
fluence of measurement error. The state-estimation method ap-
pears to be effective but its applicability has yet been fully ver-
ified using actual data in power systems. Particularly in Japan,
there has been no verification of the applicability of the method
in actual power systems.
In this paper, for Japanese field data synchronized with a GPS
clock, a practical method for power system harmonic analysis
is proposed, which is based on the harmonic state estimation
(HSE). In the proposed method, in order to improve the pre-
cision of HSE, uncertain parameters R, X, and Y of the trans-
mission lines are determined from measured fundamental data,
and bad measured harmonic data excluded systematically. It is
also possible to estimate the error of each measurement instru-
ment by using HSE. It is confirmed that by using only partial
and selected measurement data synchronized with a GPS clock,
the whole harmonic distribution of the actual power system has
been obtained effectively. Field-test results of the harmonic state
estimation on an actual Japanese power system are shown. Fur-
thermore, an example of harmonic analysis based on HSE in the
actual power system is presented, which is prediction of har-
monic voltage distribution after a change of the actual power
system configuration.
II. OUTLINE OF PROPOSED HARMONIC ANALYSIS METHOD
In conventional analyses of harmonics, harmonics are calcu-
lated repeatedly by trial and error to fit the calculated values to
the measured values. The conventional harmonic analyzes have
the following problems.
• Number of Measurements
For an actual power system, it is easy to obtain funda-
mental voltages/currents at all substations, but harmonics
are not always measured at all substations. In order to de-
termine the harmonic distribution, it is desirable to obtain
the data of all substations. However, it is difficult to mea-
sure the harmonic data because a number of instruments
cannot be provided due to the high cost and long time re-
quirements.
• Synchronization of Harmonic Data
Synchronization of harmonic voltages/currents be-
tween measurements at every substation is necessary
in order to recreate the distribution of the entire power
system in the simulation. It is difficult to maintain the
KANAO et al.: POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC ANALYSIS USING STATE-ESTIMATION METHOD
Fig. 1. Outline of harmonic analysis.
synchronization solely on the basis of the conventional
measurement that is carried out at each substation.
• Measurement Error
Almost no magnitudes of harmonic voltages/currents
are more than 5% of the fundamental value. Since the
measurement range of an instrument is adjusted for the
range of fundamental values, harmonics are not measured
precisely. In particular, the potential device (PD) for the
voltage measurement, which is widely used at 275–66 kV
substations, is fabricated for the purpose of fundamental
frequency measurement. The frequency characteristics of
the PD change significantly under the influence of the
burden (meter and relay) connected to the secondary of
the PD. Practically, it would be expensive and laborious
to measure the frequency characteristics of each PD and
calibrate the harmonic voltages. Thus, it is desirable to ob-
tain the harmonic voltage/current distribution of the entire
system using only few harmonic data values without PD
measurement.
In order to overcome these problems, a practical method of
harmonic analysis is proposed. The proposed method consists
of three parts: 1) measurement of harmonics and determination
of transmission lines’ parameters; 2) harmonic state estimation;
and 3) evaluation of estimated harmonics. The data of harmonics
is obtained by the measurement system with a GPS clock at
Hokuriku Electric Power Company (HEPCO). The outline of
the method of harmonic analysis is shown in Fig. 1. The HSE
can be run off-line when necessary. Details of each part are ex-
plained in the succeeding sections.
III. MEASUREMENT SYSTEM OF HARMONICS AT HEPCO
A. Measurement System
The measurement instruments are installed at the main
substations of HEPCO, which measure fault waveforms of
971
Fig. 2. Measurement system at HEPCO.
Fig. 3. Harmonic measuring instrument.
voltages/currents, voltage dip, harmonics, and calculate fault
location. Fig. 2 shows the overview of the measurement system.
Each instrument is connected to the research center through
a LAN. The measurement data recorded in the instrument are
collected through the LAN at the Engineering Research and
Development Center in HEPCO at almost weekly intervals.
Measured harmonic data are recorded with the time stamp
of a GPS clock. The synchronization error of this system is
within 6 , which corresponds to 0.13 degrees in electrical
angle. The error of one pulse per second (pps) for the GPS signal
is within 1 . The signal processing error is within 4 , and
the signal transmission error between units in this instrument is
1 . Therefore, the synchronization error is negligible for the
fifth and seventh harmonics.
The instrument measures the harmonics of up to the 15th
order every 30 min by the sampling frequency of 3840 Hz and
sampling interval of eight cycles (512 points) for 60 Hz, and
calculates the harmonics by fast Fourier transform (FFT). The
harmonic measuring instrument is shown in Fig. 3. Harmonic
data are changed into phasor data by FFT from the instantaneous
values measured through PT/CT, the analog filter, and A/D
converter.
972
TABLE I
MEASUREMENT ERRORS OF VOLTAGE AND CURRENT
Fig. 4. HEPCO power system.
There exist measurement errors of the PT/CT and the in-
strument. The frequency characteristics of PT/CT are flat up to
2 kHz and the rate of error is almost the same as the fundamental
frequency, so that the error rate and angle of the Standards of
The Japanese Electrotechnical Committee (JEC) 1201 [5] (1%
to 3%, 1–3 degrees) are used. The measurement error charac-
teristic of the analog filter is 0 dB up to 960 Hz, and the A/D
converter error is 0.2%, which is 16 bits ( 0.15% of the rel-
ative error calculated from 0.0015% of the quantum error).
The total error is shown in Table I. It is noted that when there is
a phase error of at the fundamental frequency, the phase error
of arises at the th harmonics.
B. Power System and System Model
As shown in Fig. 4, the HEPCO power system has seven par-
tial power systems that are represented as loads. Seven harmonic
current sources are included in these loads (Load 1 Load 7).
A transmission line is modeled as a single-phase equivalent
model with distributed parameters. Since our targets of analysis
are the fifth and seventh harmonics and the length of transmis-
sion lines is maximum at 70 km [6], [7], one step of the cir-
cuit is adopted. A transformer is modeled as a 3-winding trans-
former model with a voltage tap T. In addition, harmonic data
is extracted from the three phases as symmetrical components
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
Fig. 5. Transmission line model and transformer model with a voltage tap T.
(a) Transmission line mode. (b) 3-Winding transformer model with a voltage
tap T.
data because of the application of the single-phase models. The
transmission line model and transformer model are shown in
Fig. 5.
While the parameters , , and of transformers are
obtained by tests, the parameters R, X, and Y of transmission
lines are uncertain. In order to increase the precision in harmonic
data calculation, the values of R, X and Y must be determined
by measurement data. The relations among , , , and
at both ends of a transmission line at the fundamental fre-
quency are given by (1) and (2). Since the number of unknown
parameters is smaller than the number of measured values, pa-
rameters R, X, and Y of a transmission line are obtained by the
least-squares method using the measurement data , , ,
and
(1)
(2)
IV. METHOD OF HSE
A. State-Estimation Method
For the problems on harmonic data measurement, i.e., the
number of harmonics and measurement error, it is very effec-
tive to use a state-estimation method that has been applied to
power systems for automatic dispatching systems and so forth.
By applying the method to harmonics, it is possible to deter-
mine the entire harmonic distribution of a power system that
obeys Kirchhoff’s law using only partial and selected measure-
ment, and to analyze the harmonics obtained by the estimation
results. This section describes the overview of HSE program-
ming developed by CRIEPI [8].
KANAO et al.: POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC ANALYSIS USING STATE-ESTIMATION METHOD 973

The n points of unknown harmonic current sources and

points of measured harmonic voltages/currents phasors
are represented by (3) as measurement error [9]

(3)

where is the observational matrix defined by the power Fig. 6. Relationship of z , z , and  .
system configuration and measurement terms. Specifically, (3)
is represented by (4) as
obtained by Table I are defined as and , respectively, the range
of is within a circle, as shown in Fig. 6
(7)
(8)
where includes the error of measurement data and where
error rate of ;
error angle of .
The best-estimate value with minimizing is given as
follows:

(9)

(4) The estimated value of measurement data due to is repre-

where sented by (10) as
current of harmonic current source ;
(10)
total number of measured currents;
total number of measured voltages; Covariance matrix of and covariance matrix of
total number of unknown harmonic current sources are calculated as follows:
.
In (4), is defined as the current sensitivity (complex) of a
measurement branch for source current injected into the (11)
power system. Similarly, in (4) is the voltage sensitivity
(complex) of a measurement node for the injected current .
For example, can be calculated as the node voltage by (12)
substituting and (where ) for the basic Since the diagonal terms of and correspond to the vari-
equation (where [V], [Y], and [J] are the voltage ance, the deviations of estimated values are calculated by their
matrix, admittance matrix and the current source matrix of the square roots.
power system, respectively).
By considering the squares of the errors with a weighting B. Exclusion of Bad Data
factor as the objective function shown in (5), an estima- When a measurement is erroneous or bad, it should be de-
tion value is defined as the value of with minimum tected so that it can be removed from the estimator calculations
to improve the estimate precision [9]. The statistical properties
of measurement errors facilitate such detection.
(5) By using index represented by (13)–(15), it is possible to
identify bad data. When no measurement data is bad data, is
where and where less than 1 according to the Gaussian distribution
weighting factor matrix
(13)

(14)
(6)

(15)
covariance of measurement data ; Here, denotes the diagonal terms of covariance of .
matrix operator of complex conjugate transpose. By removing bad data , the precision of the estima-
Since the deviation corresponds to the measurement error tion can be improved. Since true values are unknown, the most
that is the magnitude of the deference between and , is probable values (MPV) estimated on the basis of reduced mea-
calculated by (7) and (8). If the error rate and error angle of surement data are defined as true values in this paper.
974
TABLE II
TRANSMISSION AND TRANSFORMER PARAMETERS
Fig. 7. Example of transmission line parameters (B line).
V. ESTIMATION RESULTS OF FIELD TEST ON POWER SYSTEM
According to the procedure shown in Fig. 1, harmonic state
estimation was field tested at the HEPCO power system shown
in Fig. 4. In this section, the results and evaluation of the field
test are described.
A. Parameters of Transmission Line
According to (1) and (2), R, X, and Y of each transmis-
sion line were calculated by using 168 measurement data (24
data/day in a week) of fundamental data , , , and in
the HEPCO power system. The averages of R, X, and Y were
used as transmission parameters. Table II lists the parameters
of each transmission line and transformer. In this paper, the
value estimated using measurements are used. Fig. 7 shows an
example of R, X, and Y of the transmission line B.
B. Harmonic State-Estimation Result Using Field Data
The HSE was performed at the power system shown in Fig. 4
using only eight measurement points of fifth harmonic currents
as shown in Table III, where more than seven measurements
were necessary for the redundancy of measurements because
seven unknown harmonic current sources existed in the power
system. The estimated results are shown in Fig. 8. It is noted
that fifth harmonic current data at only eight measurement
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
TABLE III
FIFTH HARMONIC CURRENT DATA AT EIGHT MEASUREMENT POINTS
Fig. 8. Estimated results from eight measurement data of Table III.
points give us the entire harmonic voltage/current distribution
that obeys Kirchhoff’s law.
C. MPV and Evaluation of Estimated Results
The estimated results shown in Fig. 8 were compared with the
true value (MPV). The true values were calculated by removing
bad data, as shown in Table IV. It is noted that the voltage mea-
surements at buses , , and were not used due to PD mea-
surement. In Table IV, Case 1 shows of the calculated results
including bad data and Case 2 shows of the calculated results
after the removal of bad data.
Fig. 9 shows the estimated values and the deviations derived
from (11) for the measured load currents in comparison with the
true value. It is noted that the true values exist in each deviation
range of estimated values by eight measurement points on the
branch currents. This means that the results estimated by eight
measurements of currents are sufficient.
Furthermore, improvement of the precision of HSE by
increasing the number of measurement points was examined.
Fig. 9 also indicates the estimated values and the deviation
range in the cases of 10 and 15 measurement points. It is evident
that the deviations of magnitude/phase angle in each estimated
current become small with increasing number of measurement
points, which indicates that the estimate precision is improved
by increasing the number of measurement points.
KANAO et al.: POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC ANALYSIS USING STATE-ESTIMATION METHOD 975

TABLE IV
INDEX  AND THE MPV OF MEASUREMENT DATA

Fig. 9. Comparison of HSE results and true values (MPV) on fifth harmonic
current sources. (a) Magnitude. (b) Phase angle.

Fig. 10. Estimated error rate and maximum error angle. (a) Error rate  at  =
0 in Step 1. (b) Maximum error angle  in Step 2. Fig. 9. Comparison of HSE
results and true values (MPV) on fifth harmonic current sources. (a) Magnitude.
(b) Phase angle.

Step 2) Calculate the maximum error angle by (16), when

vector is tangential to the circle with the radius of
obtained by Step 1 as shown in Fig. 10(b)

D. Estimation of Error of Fifth Harmonic Voltage (16)

Measurement
where is the root of weighting factor when of
As shown in Table IV, the fifth harmonic voltage measure- HSE equals to 1
ments of , and were removed as bad data when the error
shown in Table I was used. This means that some of the fifth Fig. 11 shows the change of of the fifth harmonic voltage
harmonic voltage measurements include more errors than the measurements by varying the weighting factors. in
expected error of 1.0%, which corresponded to the degrada- Fig. 11 was normalized by measurement data ( corresponds
tion of the weighting factors. Thus it is possible to estimate the to of (8) in case of ). Table V shows the estimated error
error rate and error angle of measured harmonic data by using rate and error angle of the fifth harmonic voltage measurement.
HSE. Procedures of the estimation are based on the relationship For example, in the case of measurement , the index was
shown in Fig. 6 and has two steps, as shown below. less than 1.0 when the was not greater than 20%
in Fig. 11. Since the maximum error rate is ,
Step 1) Calculate the error rate by assuming the error angle the maximum error angle
is zero as shown in Fig. 10(a), when the index of in the case of measurement is calculated from
HSE equals to 1.0. (16), as shown in Table V.
976
Fig. 11. Index  of fifth harmonic voltage measurement as a function of
normalized  by measurement data in (8). Fig. 9. Comparison of HSE results
and true values (MPV) on fifth harmonic current sources. (a) Magnitude.
(b) Phase angle.
TABLE V
ESTIMATED ERROR OF FIFTH-HARMONIC VOLTAGE MEASUREMENT
VI. APPLICATION OF HSE FOR SYSTEM
CONFIGURATION CHANGE
When the configuration in the subpower system of Load 1 was
changed, a change of approximately 50% of the fifth harmonic
voltages of each bus bar in Fig. 4 was observed. In order to check
whether the change of the fifth harmonic voltages was due to a
change of system configuration, harmonic analysis was carried
out by the following procedure, as shown in Fig. 12.
Step 1) Perform HSE using the measured harmonic data (old)
and the power system data (old) before changing the
power system configuration. Find the harmonic
sources (old) and the harmonic voltage distribution
(old).
Step 2) Perform HSE using the measured harmonic data
(new) and the power system data (new) after
changing the power system configuration. Find the
harmonic sources (new) and the harmonic voltage
distribution (new).
Step 3) Calculate harmonic distribution using the harmonic
current sources (old) derived from Step1 and the
power system data (new).
Step 4) Compare the harmonic voltage distribution of Step3
with the harmonic voltage distribution (new) derived
from Step2.
The estimated harmonic current sources (old) in Step1 and
harmonic current sources (new) in Step 2 remained almost
unchanged.
The measured and calculated values of the fifth harmonic
voltages are shown in Fig. 13. It is seen that the harmonic volt-
ages calculated by harmonic current sources (old) agree very
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005
Fig. 12. Procedure of harmonic analysis in the case of change of power system
configuration.
Fig. 13. Fifth harmonic voltages before/after the change of power system
configuration at Load 1.
well with the true values (new). This means that HSE can be ap-
plied to predict a harmonic voltage distribution after a change
of the power system configuration.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
Power system harmonic analysis using the HSE method,
which is applied to the actual power system in Hokuriku
Electric Power Company in Japan, is described. HSE has been
verified in the applicability using field data synchronized with
a GPS clock, i.e., the entire harmonic distribution (eight node
voltages and 25 branch currents in this study) of the actual
power system has been obtained effectively through eight
measurement data values.
• In order to increase the precision of HSE, the uncertain pa-
rameters R, X, and Y of transmission lines are determined
from measured fundamental data.
• By introducing index and determining the MPV, it is
examined whether the exclusion of bad data improves the
precision of HSE and whether by increasing the number of
good measurement data values, more precise HSE results
are obtained. By using the index of HSE, the error of
each measurement instrument can be estimated.
• HSE can be applied to predict a harmonic voltage distri-
bution after a change of the power system configuration.
KANAO et al.: POWER SYSTEM HARMONIC ANALYSIS USING STATE-ESTIMATION METHOD
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of
K. Yukihira and T. Yoshida to the program development. The
authors also acknowledge the technical support of Kinkei Ltd.
and K. Tsuji.
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harmonic estimation,” IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 9, no. 3, pp.
1701–1709, July 1994.
[5] Standard of the Japanese Electrotechnical Committee (JEC)—1201, In-
strument Transformers for Protective Relays, 1985.
[6] J. Arrillaga, B. C. Smith, N. R. Watson, and A. R. Wood, Power System
Harmonic Analysis. New York: Wiley, 1998.
[7] CIGRE Working Group 36-05, “Guide for Assessing the Network Har-
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CC02 93202,29,10, 1993.
[8] K. Yukihira, “Development of a Program for Estimating Harmonic Cur-
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[9] J. J. Grainger and W. D. Stevenson Jr, Power System Analysis. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.
Norikazu Kanao (M’03) was born in Toyama Pre-
fecture, Japan, in 1959. He received the Master’s de-
gree in electrical engineering from Nagoya Univer-
sity, Nagoya, Japan, in 1984.
In the same year, he joined Hokuriku Electric
Power Company, Toyama, Japan, where he is now
is a Sub-Manager of the Engineering Research and
Development Center.
Mr. Kanao is a member of the IEE of Japan.
Mitsunori Yamashita was born in Toyama Prefec-
ture, Japan, in 1972. He received the B.S. degree
in electrical engineering from Sophia University,
Tokyo, Japan, in 1995.
In the same year, he joined Hokuriku Electric
Power Company, Toyama, Japan, where he now is
with the Engineering Research and Development
Center.
Mr. Yamashita is a member of the IEE of Japan.
977
Hikoni Yanagida was born in Toyama Prefecture,
Japan, in 1957. He received the B.S degree in elec-
trical engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo,
Japan, in 1981.
In the same year he joined Hokuriku Electric
Power Co., Toyama, where he is now a Manager of
the Ishikawa Control Center.
Mr. Yanagida is a member of the IEE of Japan.
Munehisa Mizukami was born in Toyama Prefec-
ture, Japan, in 1952. He received the B.S degree in
electrical engineering from Tokyo Denki University,
Tokyo, Japan, in 1974.
In the same year, he joined Hokuriku Electric
Power Company, Toyama, Japan, where he is now a
Deputy Manager of the Power System Management
Department.
Mr. Mizukami is a member of the IEE of Japan.
Yasuhiro Hayashi (M’91) was born in Fukui Pre-
fecture, Japan, in 1967. He received the B.E., M.E.,
and Dr. Eng. degrees from Waseda University, Tokyo,
Japan, in 1989, 1991, and 1994, respectively.
In 1994, he joined Ibaraki University, Ibaraki,
Japan, as a Research Associate. Since 2000, he has
been an Associate Professor with the Department
of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Fukui
University, Fukui, Japan. His research interests
include the fields of optimization of power system
operation and planning, power system analysis, and
load forecasting.
Junya Matsuki (M’71) was born in Kumamoto Pre-
fecture, Japan, in 1946. He received the B.S., M.S.,
and Dr.Eng. degrees from Kyoto University, Kyoto,
Japan, in 1969, 1971, and 1979, respectively, all in
electrical engineering.
In 1971, he joined the Mitsubishi Electric Com-
pany, Japan. Currently, he is a Professor at Fukui Uni-
versity, Fukui, Japan. His research interests include
power system analysis and synchronous machines.