Publication: Investigation of harmonic distortion and losses in usm engineering campus
Date
2010-04-01
Authors
Baharudin, Nur Iryani
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Abstract
The main purpose of this project is to investigate harmonic distortion and losses in the USM Engineering Campus. Often the nonlinearity of the load will results in the generation of harmonic that can cause overheating of the electrical equipment. In this project, the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering and the Computer Centre are the selected places to be the case study due to many nonlinear load appliances compare to other places in this campus. The measurement of harmonic current level had been carried out and the source of harmonic had been identified. The measurement in the distribution system have illustrated that most of harmonic current levels are greater than 20% which are totally out of the IEEE standard and cannot be accepted. The results show that the highest harmonic current level recorded is 77.0% for power line to Satellite Lab at School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. The phenomena of neutral current flow in four-wire distribution system due to triplen harmonic and unbalanced three phase system had been investigated. The calculation shows all the percentage of the ratio between neutral current and phase current are greater than 50%. The highest percentage of the ratio between neutral current and phase current is 121.49% for power line to the Instruction Lab at the Computer Centre. Effect of harmonic distortion to power factor and power loss in distribution system had been predicted. No fixed percentages to show the extra power loss and decrease in the power factor due to harmonic current.