Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Orlando, Florida, USA, August 12-17, 2007

Optimal Estimation of Harmonics in Power System using Intelligent

Computing Techniques
V.Suresh Kumar , P.S.Kannan, K.Kalaiselvi, and D.Kavitha

Abstract-- Harmonic distortion is one of the important
problems associated with power quality and creates several
disturbances to power system. To obtain suitable control
strategy for harmonic mitigation, the harmonics present in the
system is to be estimated accurately. This paper presents
algorithms to estimate the harmonics in power systems using
genetic algorithm (GA), hybrid genetic algorithm – least square
(GA-LS), hybrid particle swarm optimization – least square
(PSO- LS) and adaptive neural network (ANN) techniques. The
objective is to estimate the magnitude and phase angle of the
harmonics by analyzing the waveform. The four techniques are
analyzed and the results are compared in terms of percentage
of error and processing time for finding suitable efficient
technique to estimate harmonics. It is identified that ANN is the
effective tool to estimate the harmonics in power system and it
can be applied online.
Index Terms-- Estimation, Genetic algorithm, Harmonics,
Intelligent computing, Least square method, Neural network,
Particle swarm optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
H armonics is basically a sinusoidal component of a
periodic waveform or quantity having frequency that is
an integral multiple of the fundamental frequency. The
harmful effects of harmonics are well established [1-6]. As
harmonics have much adverse effects on the equipment, IEC
and IEEE has developed a standard below which harmonics
should be maintained. Therefore a proper control strategy
must be provided to mitigate the harmonics. To obtain
suitable control parameter, the harmonics present in the
system is to be estimated accurately.
Normally, a filter is designed to eliminate particular
frequency component. For its proper design, first the
harmonics present in the system is to be estimated
accurately. Similarly for all control designs, estimation is
primarily considered important. For a given distorted signal,
composed of a fundamental frequency along with ‘n’
harmonics buried in stochastic noise, the problem is to
estimate the desired frequency components in the signal.
This estimation refers to estimating the amplitude and phase
of the corresponding frequency component.
Least square regression [7] analysis is initially proposed to
obtain accurate estimation. It is found to be an effective
technique to estimate the harmonics in the system whose
characteristics are not well known. If the system structure is
well defined, intelligent computing methods can be applied
V.Suresh Kumar and P.S.Kannan are with Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai-
625015, India, K.Kalaiselvi is with Sethu Institute of Technology, Madurai,
India, and D.Kavitha is with KLN College of Information Technology,
Madurai, India. (e-mail: vskeee@tce.edu)
to obtain accurate solution. Genetic algorithm techniques
have been found to give good results in order to use non
linear models [8]. But the following disadvantages were
observed with monotonic nonlinear models for harmonic
estimation.
• Time needed for convergence is large.
• Due to the existence of a large number of
parameters, more combinations of final convergence
exist. This requires some more insight into the
system structure.
• Since amplitudes and phases are altogether different
quantities with different scales, units, and physical
interpretation, it is difficult to get the homogeneous
pool with respect to the final solution.
To overcome these disadvantages, a hybrid technique
was proposed [8]. In this technique, phases are estimated
using GA. Once the phases are estimated, they can be used
with the usual LS algorithm to estimate the amplitudes.
It is found that the results obtained are still not
satisfactory. Hence in this work, algorithm for estimating
harmonics using hybrid PSO-LS technique and ANN is
proposed. PSO shares many similarities with evolutionary
computation techniques such as GA. However, unlike GA,
PSO has no evolution operators such as crossover and
mutation. In PSO, the potential solutions, called particles,
fly through the problem space by following the current
optimum particles [9-10]. Compared to GA, the advantages
of PSO are that PSO is easy to implement and there are few
parameters to adjust.
ANN is also successfully implemented for this problem.
Neural networks have self adapting and super fast
computing features that make them well suited to handle
nonlinearities, uncertainties and parameter variations that
can occur in the system [11]. Results obtained with hybrid
PSO-LS and ANN are compared with GA and hybrid GA-
LS [8] to identify the accurate and efficient technique.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
Let the assumed signal structure is,
X(t) = ∑ A n sin (w n t + ϕ n ) (1)
Algorithms are developed to estimate the amplitude (wn)
and phase angle (φn) of the signal with known harmonic
components using genetic algorithm (GA), hybrid genetic
algorithm-least square (GA-LS), hybrid particle swarm
optimization- least square (PSO-LS) and adaptive neural
network (ANN) techniques. The error minimization
between actual and estimated signal is taken up as an
objective function in all the four cases.

1-4244-1380-X/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE


A. Genetic Algorithm (GA)
In this technique, all variables (magnitude and phase angle
of all frequency components) are initially randomly
generated and according to the GA parameters, the
chromosomes are updated and final convergence is obtained.
The fitness function (objective function) is given in (2) and it
is same in other cases to be studied.
Fitness function = { mag(t) - ∑ A n sin (w n t + ϕ n )} −1 (2)
The solution algorithm is as follows:
1. Load data set, which is one period of the distorted voltage
or current waveform in this case.
2. Initialize number of parameters corresponding to number
of phases and magnitudes to be estimated, chromosome
length (10 bits for each chromosome), and random
chromosome population (20 size).
3. For each encoded chromosome, calculate the value of ∑
An sin (wnt + φn) at the given time instant.
4. Evaluate the fitness function.
5. Apply genetic operators, crossover, mutation and
reproduction based on the fitness values. (Cross over
probability = 0.9, mutation probability = 0.001)
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 until the number of generations or
convergence is reached.
The disadvantages of GA for this problem are given in [4]
and therefore the hybrid GA-LS technique is proposed.
B. Hybrid GA-LS
In this case, phase angle of compensation current is
estimated using GA and magnitude is estimated using LS [4]
method. The system structure matrix is formed as,
⎡sin(w1t1 +ϕ1) sin(w2t1 +ϕ2 ) ..... sin(wnt1 +ϕn )⎤
⎢sin(w t +ϕ ) sin(w t +ϕ ) ..... sin(wnt2 +ϕn )⎥⎥
H(t) = ⎢ 12 1 22 2 matrix.
⎢ ..... ..... ..... ..... ⎥ 4. Use LS method to estimation amplitudes.
⎢ ⎥
⎣sin(w1tk +ϕ1) sin(w2tk +ϕ2 ) ..... sin(wntk +ϕn )⎦
(3)
System structure should be well defined in this method.
The above matrix is formed only for the phase angle of the
harmonic signal to be estimated. This will reduce the
computational time and convergence properties.
The solution algorithm is as follows:
1. Load data set, which is one period of the distorted voltage
or current waveform.
2. Initialize number of parameters corresponding to number
of phases to be estimated, chromosome length (10 bits for
each chromosome), and random chromosome population
(phases).
3. For each encoded chromosome, calculate system structure
matrix using (3).
4. Estimate the amplitudes of the signal using LS technique.
5. Evaluate the performance criterion and decode it to
chromosome space.
6. Apply genetic operators, crossover, mutation and
reproduction based on the fitness values from step 5.
7. Repeat steps 3 to 6 until the performance index is
minimized or convergence is reached.
C. Hybrid PSO-LS
Since the results obtained with hybrid GA-LS are also
not completely satisfactory, the suitability of hybrid PSO-
LS method is analyzed in this work.
The problem is formulated as in Hybrid GA-LS
technique. PSO is initialized with a group of random
particles (solutions) and then searches for optima by
updating generations. Each particle is updated by following
two "best" values in every iteration. The first one is the best
solution (fitness), it has achieved so far. This value is called
pbest. Another "best" value that is tracked by the particle
swarm optimizer is the best value, obtained so far by any
particle in the population. This best value is a global best
and called gbest. When a particle takes part of the
population as its topological neighbors, the best value is a
local best and is called pbest.
After finding the two best values, the particle updates its
velocity and positions with following equation (4) and (5).
v[ ] = v[ ] + c1 * rand( ) * (pbest[ ] - present[ ]) (4)
+ c2 * rand( ) * (gbest[ ] - present[ ])
present[ ] = present[ ] + v[ ] (5)
Where, v[ ] is the particle velocity and present [
] is the current particle solution.
pbest [ ] and gbest [ ] are defined as stated before.
rand ( ) is a random number between {0, 1}.
c1, c2 are learning factors and usually c1 = c2 = 2.
The solution algorithm is as follows:
1. Load the required data set.
2. Initialize number of parameters corresponding to
number of phases to be estimated.
3. For each encoded particle, calculate system structure
5. Calculate particle velocity and update every particle
using (4).
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 until the number of generations or
the final convergence is reached.
D. Adaptive Neural Network (ANN)
Application of ANN is analyzed for the estimation of
harmonics here. A periodic waveform can be expanded by
Fourier analysis as the sum of the cosine and sine frequency
components. The desired or reference line current i*s(t) can
be expressed as
i * s (t ) = I 1 cos ϕ1 sin(ω1t ) (6)
Only the sinusoidal component of the fundamental
frequency is considered to improve the power factor. It
can be seen that the load current is the sum of the line and
compensation currents, so that if is(t) = reference quantity
i*s(t), the compensation current is also the ideal or reference
quantity i*com(t) which can be calculated using (7) and the
Fourier series of iload (t) as
N
i *com (t ) = I 1 cos(ω 1t ) sin ϕ 1 + ∑ I k sin(ω k t + ϕ k ) (7)
k =2
The following model of the signal to be estimated is to the actual signals. Number of inputs for the neural net
proposed. depends on the number of harmonics to be estimated. Total
N number of inputs required for the estimation of 16 harmonic
f (t ) = ∑ [ X n cos( n ω t ) + Yn sin( n ω t )] (8)
terms is 32 since each harmonic term requires two inputs,
n =1 one for sine value and other for cosine value. The
-where, Xn and Yn are the amplitude of the cosine and sine waveform to be estimated is sampled with the frequency of
components of order-nth harmonic. In vectorial notation: 1600Hz and hence the total number of samples given is 32.
f (t ) = W T .x (t ) (9)
T
W = [X1 Y1 X2 Y2……. XN YN] (10) III. TEST SIGNAL AND WAVEFORM ANALYSIS
The test signal used for the estimation of harmonics in
⎛ cos (w 1 t ) ⎞ this work has been referred by several authors [5,6,9] in this
⎜ sin (w 1 t) ⎟ area. Fig. 2 shows the sample system which comprises of a
⎜ ⎟ two bus three phase system with a full wave six pulse
⎜ cos (w 2 t ) ⎟ bridge rectifier at the load bus. The test signal is a distorted
⎜ ⎟ voltage waveform at the terminals of the load bus for that
⎜ sin (w 2 t) ⎟
x(t ) = ⎜ ⎟ (11) system and it is shown in Fig. 3. The frequency spectrum of
..... the signal is shown in Fig. 4.
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ..... ⎟
⎜ cos (w N t ) ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ sin (w N t) ⎟ Transfer
⎝ ⎠ 6 Pulse
Source Impedance
The signals are sampled at a uniform rate ∆t, so that Rectifier Load
time values are discrete, k∆t with k = 0, 1, 2..... The dot
product presented in (9) is carried out by one adaline neuron,
where WT is the network weights vector. After the initial
estimation, an adaptive algorithm updates the weights. Thus,
the estimated signal converges to the actual one. Fig. 1 Fig. 2. Test system
shows the network topology and the weight update algorithm
[11].

Fig. 3. Sample distorted signal

In GA, a variable size is selected as 10 bits with precision

Fig. 1. Adaptive network topology
At time k, x(k) is the proposed signal model and factual is
the actual signal. The neurons, taking into account their
weights W(k), carry out an estimation fest(k). The error e(k)
is the difference between the actual signal and estimated
signal. An algorithm allows the weights to be used in the
next iteration W(k+1) to be obtained, which minimizes that
error. After this iterative process, the estimated signals adapt
of 0.00613. To estimate 10 variables (5 numbers of
amplitudes and 5 numbers of phases) the chromosome size
is taken as 100. With 20 chromosomes in the genetic pool
selected randomly, the GA is run for a maximum of 150
generations. However, it is observed that the algorithm
converged to the final solution in approximately 100
generations. Keeping the mutation probability fixed at 1%,
the algorithm is tested with nine crossover probabilities from
60% to 100% with steps of 5%. The best results are
observed for 70% to 90% crossover. In hybrid GA-LS, the
parameters chosen are same as GA, but the chromosome
length is 50 since only phases are estimated using GA. The
estimated signal waveforms are shown in Fig.5.

(b)

Fig. 4. Frequency spectrum of sample signal

In the hybrid PSO-LS technique, parameters are chosen as

follows: Population size – 20, No. of iterations – 100,
Maximum inertia weight - 0.9 and Minimum inertia weight-
0.2. It is observed that the algorithm converged to the final
solution in approximately 40 generations. The estimated
signal waveform using hybrid PSO–LS method is shown in
Fig. 5(c). The results are obtained similar to hybrid GA-LS
method.
In ANN technique, number of inputs for the neural net
depends on the number of harmonics to be estimated. Total
number of inputs required for the estimation of 5 harmonic
terms is 10 since each harmonic term requires two inputs, one
for sine value and other for cosine value. The learning rate is
taken as 0.1. The estimated signal waveform using ANN is (c)
shown in Fig. 5(d).
Using the estimated values, the waveform is reconstructed
and compared with the original (actual) waveform for all the
techniques as shown in Fig. 5. The estimation of waveform
with ANN gives accurate results as shown in the Figure 5(d).
The other three techniques give almost similar results with
less accuracy.

(d)
Fig. 5. Actual and estimated waveforms
(a) GA (b) Hybrid GA-LS (c) Hybrid PSO-LS (d) ANN

The plots of performance indexes of all analyzed

techniques are shown in Fig. 6. From the Fig. 6(d) also, it is
found that the ANN algorithm gives less computation error.
The number of iterations selected in x axis of Fig. 6 is
(a)
different for the all four techniques just for getting clear
picture. It is identified that if the system structure is properly
formed, the system harmonics can be estimated in less time
with high accuracy.
The computing time comparison between the proposed
techniques on a Pentium IV, 2GHz system is given in Table I.
Among all the four techniques, the ANN algorithm provides
best results in terms of computing time and percentage of
error. Number of iteration required for final convergence is
also very less as shown in the Fig. 6(d) with ANN algorithm.

TABLE I
COMPARISON OF PERFORMANCE INDEX OF COMPUTING TECHNIQUES

Technique Computing Error

time (sec) (%)
GA 10 3.11 (c)
Hybrid GA-LS 4 1.02
Hybrid PSO-LS 1.5 1.10
ANN 0.157 0.10

(d)

Fig. 6. Graphical representation of convergence

(a) GA (b) Hybrid GA-LS (c) Hybrid PSO-LS (d) ANN

IV. CONCLUSIONS
(a)
The intelligent computing techniques for harmonics
estimation in a power system, comprises of power electronic
device was investigated in the paper. The estimated
waveform was obtained using genetic algorithm (GA),
hybrid genetic algorithm-least square (GA-LS), hybrid
particle swarm optimization- least square (PSO-LS) and
adaptive neural network (ANN) techniques. The estimated
waveforms are then compared with actual waveform. The
estimated waveform using ANN technique is more accurate
(nearly 100% similar) and the proposed algorithm
converges with in a few seconds. Hence ANN algorithm
can effectively be used for estimating harmonics in on-line
applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors are thankful to All India Council for Technical
(b) Education, India for their financial support (project grant:
1-51/FD/CA/(13)/2006-07) to carry out this work.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Suresh Kumar V graduated in Electrical &
Electronics Engineering from Madurai Kamaraj
University, India in 1994 and post graduated in
Power systems from National Institute of
Technology, Tiruchi, India in 1995. He then
obtained his Ph.D. in Power quality & Harmonics
from Madurai Kamaraj University in 2006. From
1997 he has been faculty of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering at Thiagarajar College of
Engineering, Madurai, India and currently working as Assistant Professor.
He has published 17 papers in national and international journals and
conferences. His fields of interest include power quality and power
electronics.
Kannan P S got graduation in Electrical &
Electronics Engineering, post graduation in power
system and Ph.D from Madurai Kamaraj University,
India in 1976, 1979 and 1995 respectively. He has
published more than 100 papers in national and
international journals and conferences. His fields of
interest include power system and power quality.
Kalaiselvi K graduated in Computer Science &
Engineering from Bharathidasan University, India
in 2000 and post graduated in Computer Science &
Engineering from Anna University, India in 2004.
She is working as Lecturer in Computer Science &
Engineering at Sethu Institute of Technology,
Madurai, India. Her area of interest is artificial
intelligence techniques.
Kavitha D graduated in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and post
graduated in power system engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University,
India in 2003 and 2005 respectively. She is working as Lecturer in
Electrical Engineering at KLN College of Information Technology,
Madurai, India. Her area of interest is power system.