Harmonic source identification with optimal placement of PMUs

A power system consists of linear as well as nonlinear loads but with the advancement in power electronics, the amount of non-linear devices are increasing day by day. This increment leads us to take into account their adverse effects on the power system as it causes the power system signals to carry different frequency components, which generate harmonics in the system. These harmonic components modifies the line admittance matrix, to some unacceptable limits, used for power flow calculations. Such modification results in error during fundamental load flow calculations. In this paper an efficient methodology to locate the harmonic sources and their injection levels has been proposed. Analysis requires the measurement data of phasor measurement units (PMUs) which are costly one. Hence, binary particle swarm optimization algorithm has been proposed for optimal placement of PMUs to get the harmonic data. The proposed harmonic identification approach is centered around the orientation of harmonic power flow at system buses. The proposed methodology is applied and validated for a 18 bus radial distribution system.