Harmonic Impacts of Warm and Cool white LED Bulbs

Harmonics produced by loads in commercial, industrial and residential places have become a growing alarm in the past 5 years because of the wide adoption of power-electronic-based home purposes. Concepts of power electronics has been broadly employed in home applications, like compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), LED lamps, etc. Power electronic based devices are harmonic contaminators, which could inject a big sum of harmonics into the utility relative to their power demand. A comparative study on the harmonic characteristics of warm and cool white AC LED bulb were conducted in this paper. The study results indicate that the total harmonic current distortion levels of warm white LED bulbs were higher than cool white LED bulbs. The 3
^rd
harmonic is the most prominent component. The THD
i
values of warm and cool white LED bulbs range between 9.5% and 127.5%. The 3
^rd
harmonic component is less for 9W and 14 W due to presence of harmonic filters thereby leading to reduction in third harmonic distortion.