Appliance-based residential harmonic load modelling

An adequate modelling of the harmonic load is required to analyse the harmonic impact and perform propagation studies. Since more and more nonlinear loads are connected with the network, such as energy saving lamps, electric vehicles, photovoltaics systems etc., the accurate modelling of the harmonic injection of new appliances becomes more important. In this paper, a bottom-up stochastic model is proposed for the modelling of harmonic loads in residential networks. First a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach is employed for household occupancy modelling with time use survey database. The occupancy, weather conditions, neighbourhood features and behavioural survey data are subsequently applied to obtain loading patterns of the household appliances. The harmonic spectra of various appliances are established based on measurements. Based on these, a harmonic load flow can be run to calculate the harmonic load of each household. Measurements of harmonic magnitude carried out in a residential low voltage network in the Netherlands are used to validate the proposed approach.