Demodulation of Three-Phase AC Power Transients in the Presence of Harmonic Distortion

Abstract

Load switches in power systems may cause oscillations in active and reactive power flow. Such oscillations can be damped by synthetic inertia provided by smart inverters providing power from DC sources such as photovoltaic or battery storage. However, AC current provided by inverters is inherently non-sinusoidal, making measurements of active and reactive power subject to harmonic distortion. As a result, transient effects due to load switching can be obscured by harmonic distortion. An RLC circuit serves as a reference load. The oscillation caused by switching in the load presents as a dual-sideband suppressed-carrier signal. The carrier frequency is available via voltage data but the phase is not. Given a group of candidate signals formed from phase voltages, an algorithm based on Costas Loop that can quickly quantify the phase difference between each candidate and carrier (thus identifying the best signal for demodulation) is presented. Algorithm functionality is demonstrated in the presence of inverter-induced distortion.