Power Quality: Harmonic Current Distortion, Standards, Field Testing and Evaluation

The power quality problems concern absolutely all spheres of human activity from household to economic and transport. Standardization, monitoring, management and coordination to ensure electromagnetic compatibility in the power supply system is the subject of constant, ongoing research in most countries of the world. In order to attract attention to problems of harmonics current the research focus is made on the harmonic current distortion at city's customers. The consolidation aspects of terminology, management and structure of power quality indicators are analyzed. The current and voltage waveform distortions and related harmonic components are considered in details. The systematization of the power quality indicators structure currently used by various regulations and standards was given as block-diagram. Based on quality indicators measurements taken place on existing urban infrastructure facilities, a comparative analysis with the IEEE 519-2014 standard requirements was made. As a result of field measurements analysis, an unsatisfactory situation in part of harmonic current distortions was revealed, the most probable causes and consequences of poor current quality are described.