Estimate Utility Harmonic Impedance via the Correlation of Harmonic Measurements in Different Time Intervals

The existing methods estimating utility harmonic impedance usually require some assumptions such as the utility side is the dominant harmonic source and the harmonic impedance of customer side is much larger than that of the utility side, etc. However, these assumptions may not always hold in modern power grid. This paper proposes a novel method without any assumption, the estimation process only uses the correlation of the harmonic data measured at a point of common coupling (PCC). Through analysis of various field harmonic data, we find that measured data have short correlation characteristics, and there always exists a common weak correlation interval for the self-correlation and cross-correlation of the measured data. According to Norton equivalent circuit modal, it is easy to deduce that the utility harmonic current source is weak self-correlated in this interval. By selecting the self-correlation of the utility harmonic current source less than a small threshold, the utility harmonic impedance can be estimated accurately, whether the traditional assumptions are valid or not. In addition, the proposed method only requires a small sample size. Performance and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified through the simulation and field cases.