Harmonic cost allocation with existing and proposed revenue metering methods

In the past few years many new definitions for electrical quantities under nonsinusoidal conditions have been discussed particularly in view to apply a fairer distribution of the financial burden required to operate the electrical system and to maintain the quality of the service. Considering the rapid deregulation of electrical utilities, it is important to know what impact the introduction of any new definition will have on the overall rate structures and billing charges, particularly those applied to the major clients. This paper investigates the performance of revenue meters which are based on the existing definitions in comparison with some of the new measuring methods being proposed for test waveforms of field recorded data. Expected changes in billing charges are computed for harmonic producing loads according to the different measuring methods considered. The field data was analyzed to indicate if it complies with the voltage and current distortion limits of the IEEE Standard 519-1992.