EXPERIMENT 4:HARMONICS IN NONLINEAR LOADS

NAME: Niranjan.G

REG.NO: 19BEE1003

Aim: To understand the effect of nonlinear loads on electric circuits

for single phase and three phase

Simulation Tool: PSCAD

Theory:

Converters or rectifiers using semiconductor switching devices generate harmonics caused

by the behavior of switching. The purpose of harmonic studies is to quantify the distortion
in voltage and/or current waveforms at various locations in a power system. The need for a
harmonic study may be indicated by excessive measured distortion in existing systems or by
installation of harmonic producing equipment. One important step in harmonic studies is
to characterize and to model harmonic-generating sources. Among the modern nonlinear
loads, power electronic devices have a significant contribution in generating harmonics
during their switching processes. In general, rectifier circuits can be simply represented by
a harmonic current source or a model that takes into account the interaction between the ac
source network and the converter dc system. Some techniques for modeling the converter
can be categorized as the frequency domain and the time-domain based models. The
frequency domain models are further divided into current source model, transfer function
model. Time domain models include representing the converter by a set of differential
equations and the state-space model. Some of these models can be integrated in harmonic
power flow analysis while the others are not.

SINGLE PHASE:
i) Circuit screenshot:(Vs=132.7Kv,R=10 ohms L=0.1H):
Voltage graph screenshots:

i) source voltage : (Vs)

Load voltage: (VL)

Current graphs:
i) source current:(Is)

ii) load current:(IL)

THD METER value:

Polygraph diagrams of magnitude,phase,IND and THD:

THREE PHASE CIRCUIT:
i) Circuit screenshot:(Vs=132.7Kv,R=100 ohms C=0.1 uF ):
CURRENT WAVEFORMS:
Ia:

Ib:
Ic:
Polygraph diagrams of magnitude,phase,IND,THD and THD
meter :

i) For Current (Ia):

ii) For Current (Ib):

iii) For Current (Ic):

Observation:
Observe the waveforms of source current, source voltage, load
current and load voltages. Calculate the THD of the source current
using the FFT tool of PSCAD.
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD):
The most common harmonic index used to indicate the harmonic
content of a distorted waveform with a single number is the total
harmonic distortion (THD). It is a measure of the effective value of
the harmonic components of
a distorted waveform, which is defined as the rms of the harmonics
expressed in percentage of the fundamental (e.g.,Current)
component:
A commonly cited value of 5% is often used as a dividing line between
a high and low distortion level. The ANSI standard recommends
truncation of THD series at 5 kHz, but most practical commercially
available
instruments are limited to about 1.6 kHz (due to the limited
bandwidth of potential and current transformers and the word length
of the digital hardware).
Inferences:
We can see that the value of THD is dependent upon the source
voltage (Vs) of a given circuit and it is different for different values of
source voltages.
Conclusion :
A suitable experiment was conducted using PSCAD to observe the
total harmonic distortion of the source current and voltage
waveforms.