What is Voltage Harmonics?
igh-frequency noise to the voltage waveforms is called voltage harmonics. It is measured in terms of total harmonic distortion (THD), which measures the percentage of high-frequency distortion to the fundamental sine waves.
Global standards such as IEE519-2014 recommend that the voltage THD must be below 8%.
Every week someone asks us: Why should I care about it?
Voltage harmonics can cause the malfunction of electronic equipment, such as overheating and humming sounds and even nuisance tripping of the protection devices.
In the long term, it can even reduce the lifetime of rotating machines, capacitors, and power transformers.
Some of these harmonics related issues are:
Disturbances in electronic equipment.
• Unwanted overload for transformers, wirings.
• Malfunctions of motors and generators.
• Unwanted Circuit Breakers tripping or Fuses blowing.
• Humming sounds & overheating in the appliance.
• Random failures of appliances.
• Poor efficiency & energy loss.
Why do voltage harmonics come from & how do you correct them?
Voltage harmonics are not easily identified in the network by an energy meter and need specialized power quality meters.
Even after one has identified an issue with voltage harmonics, the only effective way to mitigate the problem is to identify the root cause and solve it.
