An analytical expression for the standard deviation of Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) estimation is derived. It applies to the case where the estimator uses sine fitting. It is shown that, in common circumstances, it is inversely proportional to the actual value of THD, the signal-to-noise ratio and the square root of the number of samples. The proposed expression is validated both with numerical simulations and an experimental setup using a Monte Carlo procedure.
Along with the increase in the use of nonlinear electronic devices, e.g. personal computers, power tools and other electrical appliances, the requirements for uninterruptible power supplies are constantly growing. This paper proposes a method and deep analysis of results viable for checking how single-phase uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) cope with nonlinear circuits under varying power loads in terms of electric energy quality.Various classes of single-phase UPS systems with different topologies were tested, for instance line-interactive and double conversion (online) single-phase UPS devices. Furthermore, measurements were carried out in view of a power source – loads were supplied both from a power grid and UPS built-in battery. Juxtaposition of the obtained results such as a THDU, THDI (Total Harmonic Distortion) percentage ratio of input/output voltage and current, a power factor and crest factor volume etc. of the tested UPS systems indicated major differences in their performance during laboratory tests.
In this paper we introduce a self-tuning Kalman filter for fast time-domain amplitude estimation of noisy harmonic signals with non-stationary amplitude and harmonic distortion, which is the problem of a contactvoltage measurement to which we apply the proposed method. The research method is based on the self-tuning of the Kalman filter's dropping-off behavior. The optimal performance (in terms of accuracy and fast response) is achieved by detecting the jump of the amplitude based on statistical tests of the innovation vector of the Kalman filter and reacting to this jump by adjusting the values of the covariance matrix of the state vector. The method's optimal configuration of the parameters was chosen using a statistical power analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms competing methods in terms of speed and accuracy of the jump detection and amplitude estimation.
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.