Identification of multiple harmonic sources in power systems using independent component analysis and mutual information

This paper presents a novel technique for accurate determination of the probable locations of multiple harmonic sources in power systems. In the proposed methodology, independent component analysis (ICA), which is one of the blind source separation techniques, is applied for estimating the profiles of injected harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads. By using the ICA algorithm, the reconstruction of the injected harmonic currents can be implemented easily without prior knowledge about the system components. From the reconstructed harmonic current profiles, the mutual information theory is then applied for determining the exact location of harmonic sources by computing the pair-wise mutual information between the extracted current trends and bus voltages. Numerical simulations were made to prove the accuracy of the proposed method in locating multiple harmonic sources in the IEEE 30 and 34 bus test distribution systems. Results proved that the proposed method can accurately determine the probable location of harmonic sources in radial and non radial power systems with mean square error less than 0.00035.