IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO.

2, APRIL 2002 495

Harmonic Study of the Le Blanc Transformer for

Taiwan Railway’s Electrification System
Sy-Ruen Huang, Member, IEEE, and Bing-Nan Chen

Abstract—The harmonic current of the Le Blanc transformer

of the Taiwan railway system is measured to determine how it re-
duces the power supply capacity to the trolley (nonlinear load). Im-
provements to the harmonic current in point-of-common-coupling
(PCC) after adding the double-tuned filter to the load side, are also
described.
Index Terms—Harmonic current, Le Blanc transformer, railway
electrification system.

I. INTRODUCTION

A RAILWAY trolley requires much power. The cor-

responding current becomes unbalanced if one of
the three-phase sources is selected for the trolley traction.
The Taiwan railway substation thus employs the Le Blanc
transformer with a specially designed connection as its
main transformer to avoid interfering with the balance of the
three-phase source. This transformer transforms the three-phase
source into a two single-phase source for electric traction. The
power supply to Taiwan railway’s electric system employs the
transmission system of Taiwan Power Company whose voltage
is 69 kV. The three phase Y-connected system is converted into
two 26 kV single-phase sources via a Le Blanc transformer to
provide electric traction. The Le Blanc transformer is especially
designed to transform from three phases to two single phases.
Fig. 1 displays the connection method, for which the primary
side is a connection (69 kV), the secondary side is a specially
designed connection (26 kV), and the phase angle difference
between phase and phase is 90 . Recently, research into
the Le Blanc transformer has included 1) establishing a Le
Blanc primary side equivalent impedance circuit model [1] for
three-phase power flow or fault analysis and 2) the influences
on power supply voltage of an unbalanced load voltage due
to an unbalanced railway electrification system load [2], [3].
The work considers whether harmonic disturbance causes the
equipment capacity of the feeding Le Blanc transformer to be
reduced.
However, the third and fifth harmonic components are max-
imal since the load side of the feeding
Le Blanc transformer, a two single-phase source, supplies the
power. Consequently, this work installs the double-tuned filter
on the load side to improve the harmonic influence of the
feeding Le Blanc transformer and thereby eliminate the third
and fifth harmonic to match the harmonic control standard
Manuscript received March 3, 2000; revised October 24, 2001. This work
was supported by the National Science Council of the Republic of China under
Contract NSC89-2213-E-035-077.
The authors are with the Energy Conversion Laboratory, Department of Elec-
trical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8977(02)02714-0.
Fig. 1. Connection of Le Blanc transformer.
of Taiwan Power Company. The effects of eliminating the
harmonic after installing the filter are compared.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II intro-
duces the structure of the Le Blanc transformer and the charac-
teristics of the harmonic component. Section III elucidates the
backgrounds of actual measurement and harmonic control stan-
dard. Section IV proposes a design for the double-tuned filter
and describes the effect of improving the harmonic component.
Section V concludes this paper.
II. LE BLANC TRANSFORMER
A. Characteristics of the Power Supply of the Le Blanc
Transformer
The primary side of the Le Blanc transformer is a connec-
tion winding, its secondary side uses an unbalanced winding
structure (phases and have two secondary side windings;
however, phase has only one winding).
The harmonic component of the Le Blanc transformer greatly
exceeds that of the conventional transformer such that a filter is
required to eliminate it, due to the specially designed connec-
tion of its secondary side. The secondary side output voltage
and current show a 90 phase angle difference as depicted in
Figs. 2 and 3. The turn ratio of Le Blanc transformer winding
must be as follows, to ensure that the secondary side voltage
balances the two phases:
(1)

0885-8977/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE

496
Fig. 2. Relationship between voltages in the Le Blanc transformer.
Fig. 3. Relationship between currents in the Le Blanc transformer.
where is the line voltage ratio of the primary side to that of the
secondary side of the transformer.
1) Voltage Analysis: According to (1), the relationship be-
tween primary side and secondary side voltage is as fol-
lows:
(2)
Fig. 2 shows the relationship between each phase of the
voltage.
2) Current Analysis: According to Fig. 1, after the am-
pere-turn of the secondary side is reflected on the
primary side, the primary side current is analyzed as
follows (taking as the reference current):
(3)
Equation (3) describes the relationship between each
phase current of the primary side and the secondary side.
Accordingly, the relationship between the line current of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, APRIL 2002
the primary side and that of the secondary side current
can be expressed as (4)
(4)
Fig. 3 shows the relationship between each phasor of cur-
rent.
B. Characteristics of Harmonic Current on Secondary Side of
Le Blanc Transformer
Fig. 1 illustrates the secondary side of the Le Blanc trans-
former. The current with phase can be considered as
the sum of the fundamental and odd order harmonic frequen-
cies (the even order frequencies of the harmonic are 0), and the
root mean square values of the currents are represented as
and
(5)
where is called the input displacement
angle of the fundamental frequency. By assuming that the
power system is a balanced three-phase source with the rating
load, gives the phase angle shift of the other current for
(6)
Hence, the current in the neutral wire is the vector sum of two
single-phase currents as shown in Fig. 1. Moreover, applying
Kirchhoff’s current law to the current at the node allows us to
establish the following equation:
(7)
Substituting (5) and (6) into (7) shows that the fundamental
frequency and all odd order harmonic frequencies are vector
sums. Thus, the compound current, ’s fundamental fre-
quency, and odd order harmonic frequency are times the
individual phase current value. The phase angle difference is
45
(8)
According to the above equation, the harmonic current of
the Le Blanc transformer exceeds that of a conventional trans-
former with the same capacity. The fact that the neutral wire
HUANG AND CHEN: HARMONIC STUDY OF THE LE BLANC TRANSFORMER FOR TAIWAN RAILWAY’S ELECTRIFICATION SYSTEM
Fig. 4. Measurement equipment.
TABLE I
SUMMARY OF FUNDAMENTALS AT THREE SUBSTATIONS
TABLE II
HARMONIC CURRENT LIMITS FOR NONLINEAR LOADS AT THE PCC
WITH OTHER LOADS AT 34.5 KV TO 161 KV
is connected to the railroad explains why the harmonic current
of the railroad is high. Therefore, multiple grounding branches
(Taiwan railway has established eight branches of grounding)
are needed to prevent the harmonic current of railroad from in-
terfering with the communication circuit. Section II-A eluci-
dates the two single phase currents and of the secondary
side of the transformer
(9)
(10)
Equations (5), (6), (9), and (10), along with actual measured
data may explain why the injection current of harmonic cur-
rent on the PCC point of every substation is so high. This ex-
tremely high current follows from two facts: 1) the line current
of the primary side is the vector sum of the currents of the sec-
ondary side and 2) the current at the PCC point equals the line
current of the primary side. Consequently, the injection of har-
monic current at the PCC point is the vector sum of the sec-
ondary side’s harmonic currents. The effect of the harmonic fil-
497
Fig. 5. Shunt filter on the load side and its equivalent circuit.
Fig. 6. Structure of (a) two single-tuned filter and (b) double-tuned filter.
Fig. 7. Simulated frequency–impedance response diagram of the double-tuned
filter.
tering on the primary side winding connection of the trans-
former is thus unsatisfactory. However, while the primary side
of Le Blanc transformer is a connection, the power loads of
phase and cannot be balanced to prevent a
connection from efficiently eliminating three times the fre-
quency harmonic. Moreover, the primary side (injection on PCC
point) harmonic of the Le Blanc transformer cannot function as
( Y, Y ) and ( , YY) using a 30 phase angle shift to elim-
inate the fifth, seventh, and higher odd harmonic orders (sev-
enteenth, nineteenth, twenty-ninth, thirty-first, forty-first, and
forty-third). Thus, according to the results presented here, the
harmonic current of the Le Blanc transformer exceeds that of a
conventional transformer of equal capacity. The harmonic com-
ponents include all odd order harmonics, and the main compo-
nents are the third and fifth harmonics. Hence, this work seeks
to design the double-tuned filter for these two harmonics. This
filter is installed on the secondary side of the Le Blanc trans-
498 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, APRIL 2002

TABLE III
MEASUREMENTS OF HARMONIC CURRENT BEFORE IMPROVEMENT IN TAIWAN RAILWAY SYSTEM’S SUBSTATION

former to eliminate harmonic currents. Finally, the harmonic TABLE IV

MEASUREMENTS OF HARMONIC CURRENT AFTER IMPROVEMENT IN
component, and the effects of the presence and absence of the TAIWAN RAILWAY SYSTEM’S SUBSTATION
harmonic component are compared.

III. HARMONIC MEASUREMENT AND STANDARD

A. Background of Measurement
The effect of the railway system’s harmonic on the feeding Le
Blanc transformer is mainly attributed to the resonance caused
by the harmonic current of the trolley at the substation. This
resonance increases Le Blanc transformer loss, increases the
temperature and reduces the output capacity, ultimately causing
the transformer to burn off. Hence, this study obtains the har-
monic current at 14 substations. The measurement is taken on
the primary and secondary sides of the Le Blanc transformer
using a current transformer (CT) and a CT probe as shown in
Fig. 4, giving the current signals of the primary and secondary
sides. The primary side current transformer is CT: 150/1 and
the secondary side current transformer is CT: 800/1. The cur-
rent signals are thus obtained and converted to low voltage sig-
nals which are sent to the harmonic meter for measurement.
The harmonic meter is then set to obtain every hour data con-
cerning current, phase angle, every harmonic, frequency, and
power factor. The data is recorded by auto saving. This paper
only elucidates the results of three substations even though mea-
surements were made at 14 substations, since the harmonic cur-
rents of each substation resemble each other. These three substa-
tions are at Hsinchu, Changhua, and Neili Counties in Taiwan.
The standard harmonic sampling interval of the Taiwan Power (about five days per week). Hence, analyzing harmonic data in
system was one hour. Accordingly, around 480 sets (24 h five this study involved the frequency distribution at each level of
days four weeks) of data for each level of harmonic current harmonic current and thus eliminating the maximum harmonic
were recorded by measuring at every substation for one month current (containing a 5% probability) of the weekly measured
HUANG AND CHEN: HARMONIC STUDY OF THE LE BLANC TRANSFORMER FOR TAIWAN RAILWAY’S ELECTRIFICATION SYSTEM
data, to leave a 95% cumulative probability for every level of
harmonic current. The analysis demonstrated that the harmonic
current only slightly changed when the trolley was on the uphill
section (for a trolley speed of around 50 km/h), and the distribu-
tion of the odd order harmonic current is a normal distribution.
Accordingly, the expectancy value of the root mean square of
the harmonic current is adopted as the base data for all levels of
harmonic current.
B. Background of Control Standard
The ratio can be calculated from Table I which in-
cludes preliminary information from Taiwan railway substation.
Table II gives the corresponding control standard and includes
reference indices for the temporary power harmonic system,
as revised by the Taiwan Power Company on June 4, 1993.
This information is based on the given level of load voltage and
the ratio. This study compares the measurements with
Table II to determine whether the control standard is achieved.
A filter is designed to eliminate harmonics and thus meet the
standards of the Taiwan Power Company.
IV. DESIGN OF HARMONIC ELIMINATION IN THE
LE BLANC TRANSFORMER
A. Design of the Double-Tuned Filter [4]
As mentioned in Section II, the third and fifth harmonics are
the primary sources of disturbance to the railway power system.
The single-tuned filter is not used to eliminate the harmonic
due to spatial limitations and the difficulty of protection. Ac-
cordingly, this work designs the double-tuned filter for the third
and fifth harmonics to improve the power supply quality of the
power system. The design procedure follows.
Step 1) Individually design the 174 Hz and 290 Hz single-
tuned filters to avoid resonance at 180 Hz and 300
Hz, which would cause the burning up of the devices.
The filters have , , , and as in Fig. 6(a).
Step 2) Determine the equivalent impedances of two single-
tuned filters and try to approach their resonance fre-
quency. Fig. 5 shows the location of the double-
tuned filter in the railway system.
Hence, the conversion relationship between the filters shown
in Fig. 6(a) and (b) can be represented as follows:
(11)
The properties of the double-tuned filter devices designed
here are, mH, mH, F,
F and those of the double-tuned filter capacitor
bank are 1.8 MVAR, 26 kV, 60 Hz. Fig. 7 shows the simulated
frequency–impedance response diagram for the double-tuned
filter. The primary advantage of the double-tuned filter is that
the series inductance can restrict the impulse voltage generated
in the transmission line, such that the filter is suited a high
voltage system. However, the structure of the double-tuned
499
filter reduces the power loss of the fundamental frequency
more effectively than does a single-tuned filter.
B. Improving Low Order Harmonics
Comparing Tables III and IV shows that, before improve-
ment and after installing the double-tuned filter (the third and
fifth order), the 69 kV side’s total harmonic current distortion
decreases from 13% to 6.596% at the Changhua substa-
tion (specified as the actual values in Tables III and IV). The sub-
station harmonic current on the primary side (69 kV) is greatly
improved. Also, the filter can eliminate most of the harmonic
current injected into 69 kV power system (referred to as the
actual values in Table IV) to reach the standard of the Taiwan
Power Company (as shown in Table II).
V. CONCLUSION
The measurements of this work show not only that the har-
monic current value largely declines after installing the double-
tuned filter, but also that the total harmonic current distortion
after the improvement corresponds to the harmonic control of
the Taiwan Power Company. The results further show that the
double-tuned filter can be applied to the railway system. How-
ever, the Le Blanc transformer can increase the maximum load
current value, after the filter is installed. Restated, the output
rating capacity of the transformer is thus increased.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Taiwan Railway Admin-
istration (TRA) for allowing measurements to be taken at their
properties.
REFERENCES
[1] B. K. Chen and B. S. Guo, “Three phase models of specially connected
transformers,” IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 11, pp. 323–330, Jan.
1996.
[2] T. H. Chen, “Criteria to estimate the voltage unbalances due to
high-speed railway demands,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 9, pp.
1672–1678, Aug. 1994.
[3] , “Comparison of Scott and Le-Blanc transformers for supplying
unbalanced electric railway demands,” Elect. Power Syst. Res., vol. 28,
no. 3, pp. 235–240, Jan. 1994.
[4] J. Arrillaga, Power System Harmonics. New York: Wiley, 1985, pp.
296–324.
Sy-Ruen Huang (M’93) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the M.S. and Ph.D. de-
grees in electrical engineering from National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu,
Taiwan, in 1988, 1998, and 1993, respectively.
In 1993, he joined the Faculty of Feng Chia University, where he is currently
an Associate Professor of electrical engineering. His research interests include
applications of neural networks and time series analysis to electric power
systems.
Bing-Nan Chen received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Feng
Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, R.O.C. He is currently pursuing the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering at Feng Chia University.
His research interests include harmonic measurement and engineering eco-
nomics applied to power systems.