A Fully Informative Phasor Measurement Unit for Distribution Networks With Harmonic Distortion

We introduce a fully informative distribution network phasor measurement unit (FI-DPMU), that is capable of performing a simultaneous estimation of phasor dynamics and harmonic components. This is in contrast with current state-of-the-art devices, that only provide information about the fundamental component of voltages/currents—by discriminating or filtering-out their harmonic content. The FI-DPMU hence represents a significant economical solution, since it bypasses the need to deploy power quality analyzers to retrieve full information about the network. To validate the accuracy of the FI-DPMU, we performed a hardware-in-the-loop implementation to emulate a distribution network that is subject to abrupt frequency variations and high harmonic distortion. The tests demonstrate that the FI-DPMU satisfies the standards of distribution network phasor measurement units (DPMUs), providing a real-time fast Fourier transform (FFT) as additional feature. Experimental results show a comparison between FI-DPMU measurement data with the information provided by a commercial DPMU.