Meeting new marine harmonic standards

In order to address concerns associated with electrical power system harmonic distortion on ships and off-shore oil platforms, marine regulating bodies have introduced strict new harmonic standards. These standards define the acceptable level of harmonic voltage distortion allowed on the vessels they certify. High harmonic distortion levels are appearing as a result of the increased use of power electronic drive converters for electric propulsion, drilling and pumping applications and many other uses of variable speed drive systems. In order to meet these new standards, methods to control harmonics must be adopted. This paper will discuss some of these methods and present an application where a unique wide spectrum passive harmonic filter was used to meet harmonic limits on a cable laying ship that previously required the use of rented generators to allow operation of variable speed drives.