Energy Efficiency versus Harmonic Analysis in Low Voltage Networks

The paper deals with harmonic tests in power quality analysis performed in order to assess energy efficiency. It casts also a glance to the necessary move towards a new paradigm, due in the authors opinion to the IEEE Std. 1459-2010. In the introductory section, a few aspects related to the motivation of the increasingly concern for power quality issues are presented. Due to the fact that the introduction of the concept of harmonic analysis was the major step in the study of power resolution and power quality, the second section focuses on the scientific debate regarding the resolution of power, which lasts for almost a century, culminating somehow with the most recent resolution of power in non-sinusoidal systems, produced by the standard IEEE Std. 1459-2010. This latest resolution pleads undoubtedly for the importance of harmonic analysis in electric power quality. It is a pity that available power quality analyzers put on the market, cannot perform such a detailed analysis. The next section presents a harmonic analysis in a few relevant case studies on this matter. The analysis is conducted in terms of energy efficiency, using a performant power quality analyzer, available nowadays in the market, for single-phase end user's systems, supplied by sinusoidal and several distorted voltages.