|
,
Cut Through Distortion: A Starter’s Guide to Harmonics & ProVision
Modern variable-frequency drives, LED lighting, and other switching loads flood today’s feeders with non-linear current—and the distorted waveforms they create don’t behave like ordinary sags or swells. Getting Started with Harmonics walks newcomers through the essentials: defining harmonics, interharmonics, and sub-synchronous components; showing why voltage distortion almost always starts as current distortion; and contrasting familiar Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) with the more decision-ready Total Demand Distortion (TDD). The paper then turns theory into practice, using Power Monitors’ ProVision software to transform raw captures into 3-D harmonic landscapes, targeted strip-charts, and custom bar graphs. Step-by-step screen shots illustrate how to isolate the 5th and 7th currents of a wye-connected motor, spot phase imbalance, and verify compliance against IEEE-519 limits—all in minutes, without scripting or external tools. A concise conclusion recaps the workflow and points to deeper resources.
Key topics include:
- Harmonic Overview
- Harmonic Analysis with ProVision
Why utilities should care:
As non-linear loads proliferate, customer complaints about overheating neutrals, transformer buzz, and stray-voltage trips increasingly trace back to poorly understood harmonic currents. The workflow in this paper equips distribution engineers with repeatable diagnostics that transform a vague “power-quality problem” into a quantified, IEEE-referenced case. Applying its techniques lets utilities pinpoint offending loads faster, size filters or capacitor banks correctly the first time, and avert the penalties, warranty claims, and lost goodwill that come with chronic distortion.
You may also enjoy...
