Comparison of Methods for Determining Harmonic Distortion Contributions Using the IEEE Benchmark Test System

The growing use of nonlinear devices has raised the harmonic levels in power systems. A challenging power quality problem is determining how much each installation contributes to the harmonic voltages measured at a point of common coupling so that the costs of mitigation solutions can be fairly divided. Currently, there is still no practical worldwide established method to solve this problem. The IEEE PES Task Force on Harmonic Modeling and Simulation developed a Benchmark Test System to support this line of research. Therefore, this article uses the IEEE PES Benchmark to evaluate and compare harmonic contribution determination (HCD) methods. To do so, this Benchmark Test System was implemented in MATLAB/Simulink and used to test five HCD methods proposed in the literature under different network operating cases, including cases with background distortions and resonance. The methods are the Voltage Harmonic Vector Method, the IEC Method, the Dominant Impedance Method, the Capacitor Switching Method, and the Harmonic Current Injection Method. It has been found that the HCD methods generally led to similar contribution percentages, proving the convergence of the methodologies. In addition, an analysis of the methods’ sensitivity to input measurement errors was done.