Harmonic Phasor Measurements in Real-World PMU-Based Acquisitions

Modern distribution networks prove to be easily prone to power quality issues, and in particular to the presence of harmonic components in the voltage and current signals, due to the increasing presence of nonlinear loads, distributed generation, and renewable energy sources. In addition, the non-stationary operating conditions make the problem of harmonic phasors' estimation particularly challenging. The application of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) might represent a promising alternative to traditional approaches based on the Discrete Fourier Transform. In this paper, we propose to exploit two estimation techniques derived from recent PMU-based applications and discuss their estimation results in a real-world measurement dataset, acquired in the medium voltage distribution network of EPFL campus.