The quality of the supplied power by electricity utilities is regulated and of concern to the end user. Power quality disturbances include interruptions, sags, swells, transients and harmonic distortion. The instruments used to measure these disturbances have to satisfy minimum requirements set by international standards. In this paper, an analysis of multi-harmonic least-squares fitting algorithms applied to total harmonic distortion (THD) estimation is presented. The results from the different least-squares algorithms are compared with the results from the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) algorithm. The algorithms are assessed in the different testing states required by the standards.

This paper presents a universal approximation of the unit circle by a polygon that can be used in signal processing algorithms. Optimal choice of the values of three parameters of this approximation allows one to obtain a high accuracy of approximation. The approximation described in the paper has a universal character and can be used in many signal processing algorithms, such as DFT, that use the mathematical form of the unit circle. One of the applications of the described approximation is the DFT linear interpolation method (LIDFT). Applying the results of the presented paper to improve the LIDFT method allows one to significantly decrease the errors in estimating the amplitudes and frequencies of multifrequency signal components. The paper presents the derived formulas, an analysis of the approximation accuracy and the region of best values for the approximation parameters.