Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482

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Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

Harmonic distortion monitoring for nonlinear loads using

neural-network-method
Claudionor Francisco Nascimento a , Azauri Albano Oliveira Jr. b , Alessandro Goedtel c, ,
Alvaro Batista Dietrich a
a
Federal University of ABC (UFABC), CECS, R. Santa Adelia, 166, 09210-170 Santo Andre, SP, Brazil
b
University of So Paulo (USP), Elect. Eng. Dept., Av. Trab. So-carlense, 400, 13566-590 So Carlos, SP, Brazil
c
Federal University of Technology (UTFPR), Elect. Eng. Dept., Av. Alberto Carazzai, 1640, 86300-000 Cornlio Procpio, PR, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Nowadays, harmonic distortion in electric power systems is a power quality problem that has been
Received 14 January 2012 attracting signicant attention of engineering and scientic community. In order to evaluate the total
Received in revised form 13 June 2012 harmonic distortion caused by particular nonlinear loads in power systems, the harmonic current compo-
Accepted 17 August 2012
nents estimation becomes a critical issue. This paper presents an efcient approach to distortion metering,
Available online 5 September 2012
based on articial neural networks applied to harmonic content estimation of load currents in single-
phase systems. The harmonic content is computed using the estimation of amplitudes and phases of the
Keywords:
rst ve odd harmonic components, which are carried out considering the waveform variations of cur-
Articial neural networks
Distortion measurement
rent drained by nonlinear loads, within previously known limits. The proposed online monitoring method
Power quality requires low computational effort and does not demand a specic number of samples per period at a xed
Total harmonic distortion estimation sampling rate, resulting in a low cost harmonic tracking system. The results from neural networks har-
monic identication method are compared to the truncated fast Fourier transform algorithm. Besides,
simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed approach.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Power electronic converters are widespread in industrial, com-
mercial, and home applications, increasing the interest in power
quality (PQ) issues [1]. Such devices are considered harmonic-
producing nonlinear loads, draining nonsinusoidal currents, and
can lead to disturbances in AC electric power systems, deteriorating
its PQ indices [26].
Nonlinear single-phase loads of low power, like ballasts and
personal computer power supplies, are used on large-scale in com-
mercial buildings and can cause signicant harmonic distortion
problems, affecting all loads connected to the point of common
coupling (PCC) of a power system. The presence of nonlinear loads
in power systems can make the correct quantication of power
ows difcult [5].
Harmonic content metering has been used to characterize non-
linear loads behavior, to locate harmonic sources and to quantify
the harmonic distortion in power systems [2]. Analysis of waveform
distortion in power systems requires a comprehensive and precise
Corresponding author. Tel.: +55 43 35204096; fax: +55 43 35204010.
E-mail addresses: claudionor.nascimento@ufabc.edu.br (C.F. Nascimento),
azauri@sc.usp.br (A.A. Oliveira Jr.), agoedtel@utfpr.edu.br (A. Goedtel),
alvaro.dietrich@ufabc.edu.br (A.B. Dietrich).
analytical basis in the following subjects: (i) linear loads; (ii) nonlin-
ear loads; (iii) equipment; and (iv) steady-state waveform Fourier
analysis.
Researches on smart grid aim the evolution of conventional
electrical power systems, increasing its controllability and reliabil-
ity, concomitantly with the ability to connect renewable sources
up using power electronic converters. In the implementation of a
smart grid, the companies should be able to provide high quality
voltage to its consumers, with well-controlled levels of harmonic
pollution. Harmonics metering capability for smart meters have
been proposed for monitoring and analysis issues in control cen-
ters of smart power system [79]. Moreover, technologies based on
intelligent systems such as articial neural networks (ANNs), have
been integrated in smart meters, in sensors, and in pulse-width
modulation (PWM) drivers as a result of the technological progress
of online applications in power systems [911].
In a smart grid, a PQ online monitoring system can deal with
techniques for the determination of harmonic content in distorted
voltage power systems [10]. Besides, in some cases, mitigation
devices are required to maintain the electric energy quality sup-
plied to end-users [12]. Therefore, even in new concepts of electric
power distribution, there is a concern about current total harmonic
distortion (THD) and other PQ indices [13]. The THD is the most
common harmonic index used to evaluate and meter the conditions
of PQ variations under nonsinusoidal conditions.

1568-4946/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2012.08.043
476 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482

In order to compensate or to mitigate harmonic distortion in

power systems, some solutions recently presented include the
use of active power lters (APFs), whose performance is directly
dependent on efcient harmonic content identication algorithms
[1417]. Such identication is performed using two approaches:
time domain [15] and frequency domain [17]. The latter method
uses traditional techniques for signal spectral analysis as Fourier
series and discrete Fourier transform (DFT).
The DFT has certain drawbacks for the harmonic analysis of a
signal such as spectral leakage, demanding the exact number of AC
power supply voltage periods to sample the current signal and the
assumption of correct fundamental frequency [18,19]. Usually, the
harmonic analysis of electric power system is carried out using fast
Fourier transform (FFT) which is a powerful tool, but also subjected
Fig. 1. Modeled single-phase system which comprises two different nonlinear loads
to specic restrictions, like phase errors [1921]. draining iL1 and iL2 currents.
Alternative methods to FFT analysis are found in recent works,
which depict ANNs applied to harmonic content determination in
three-phase systems and in single-phase systems [14]. In [18] it Section 3 discusses the principles of neural approach in harmonic
was reported that ANNs are able to evaluate PQ indices successfully. identication; Section 4 shows how the harmonic content identi-
Nowadays, ANNs are widely used in power electronics and electric cation is carried out; nally, the conclusions drawn from the results
power systems issues, including control systems for PQ devices, of this study are addressed in Section 5.
unied power ow controller (UPFC), and eld-programmable gate
arrays (FPGA) [2226]. 2. Nonlinear load characterization
Harmonic identication using the ANN-based method has some
advantages as simplied algorithms and low computational effort Characterization and modeling of harmonic sources are impor-
[10,18,19]. Such characteristics and the parallel computing archi- tant steps in harmonics and THD studies [4,5,12,3335]. Two kinds
tecture of ANN lead to improved software speed and reliability. of nonlinear loads, which require attention due to its harmonic
In commercial and home electric systems, or even in lighting characteristics, are modeled in this section: the AC controller,
and administrative portions of industrial plants, several kinds of applied as dimmers in lighting control, and the full-bridge diode
single-phase nonlinear loads connected to balanced three-phase rectier with output capacitive lter, widely used in AC/DC con-
systems are observed [27]. Some of these loads show steady-state verters of home appliances and electronics [27,29].
current waveforms with a well-known theoretical behavior, e.g. The neural-network-method proposed can be used for nonlin-
single-phase AC voltage controllers for bulb lamps (dimmers) dis- ear loads connected to balanced four-wire three-phase systems or
tributed in four-wire three-phase systems. Nevertheless, variations connected to single-phase systems.
in controller circuit parameters and in its electrical loads can lead to In this work, simulation and tests are carried out considering
uncertainties in the resulting current distortion and, consequently, only the single-phase system shown in Fig. 1, which comprises two
on its harmonic content. Considering a dimmer as an example, such nonlinear loads: an AC controller, acting as dimmer for incandes-
variations are ring angle choice, dependent on human adjustment, cent lamps, and a full-bridge single-phase rectier, feeding a RC
and resistance variations of lamp lament, due to its temperature linear load. The resistance RL is composed by three 100 W/220 V
[28,29]. incandescent lamps, and the rectier output has a 470 F capacitor
In APF for distributed power harmonic compensation, sampling lter and a resistive load of 730 . Both nonlinear loads are fed by a
of current signal with these uncertainties in waveforms leads to
increased computation efforts and algorithm complexity, if tra-
ditional methods are used [10,18]. In the reviewed literature,
harmonic analyses of nonlinear loads are often done without
considering steady-state current variations [30].
This work proposes a neural-network-method for current har-
monic content identication and THD estimation in single-phase
power systems, feeding nonlinear loads that can be analytically
modeled on its theoretical behavior, but with uncertainties in
model parameters. This ANN method can be used, e.g. in smart
meters and APF control system, for selective compensation of some
specic and critical harmonics [9,11,20].
The proposed methodology demands previous characterization
of nonlinear loads to produce the training patterns for the ANN
structure, which is subsequently trained in ofine form [1]. Train-
ing stage of ANN follows a cross-validation method, hereinafter
referred to as double cross-validation method [31,32], which is
based on analytical and experimental results to validate the pro-
posed approaches. After the training process, the ANN performs the
online identication of harmonic coefcients of load current and
the THD computation, for each half-period of voltage source wave-
form. The neural network converges within waveform variations
previously trained.
This paper has the following organization: Section 2 describes
the nonlinear loads and the single-phase system characteristics; Fig. 2. Sampling process of load current.
 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482 477

purely sinusoidal power supply vs (t). The switches S1 and S2 select to dimmer current (iL1 ), as illustrated in Fig. 3(a). Eq. (5), obtained
which loads will contribute for the total current at PCC. Therefore from (1)(4), is the Fourier series for the nth order harmonic (n odd)
iL (t) = iL1 (t) when only S1 is turned on, iL (t) = iL2 (t) when only S2 is where V is the peak voltage and = 2f0 .
turned on and iL (t) = iL1 (t) + iL2 (t) when both S1 and S2 are turned on. V
1 1
The current signal at PCC is sensed by a hall sensor and is sampled iL1 (t) = [cos 2f 1]cos t+ [sin 2f + 2 2f ]sin t
RL 2 2
in half-period of voltage source as shown in Fig. 2.


The dimmer circuit controls its load power by adjusting the cos(n + 1)f cos(n + 1)
TRIAC A ring angle (f ), which is dened as shown in Fig. 3(a). +
n+1
Depending on the dimmer setting point, iL1 waveform varies for r- n=3

ing angle changes and also due to RL resistance variations. Changes cos(n 1)f cos(n 1)
cos nt
in RL occur as a result of lamp (light bulb) lament temperature n1
which varies according to dimmer output RMS voltage. Fig. 3(b)
 
shows the simulated waveform of the input current of the rectier  sin(n + 1)f sin(n 1)f
(iL2 ). All simulation results presented in this work were obtained + sin nt
n+1 n1
using MatLab/Simulink software. n=3
(5)
Analytical harmonic characteristics of system loads are evalu-
ated by Fourier series, by (1)(4): The resistance RL of the incandescent lamp set varies in function
of lament temperature and, therefore, in function of the dimmer


x(t) = [An cos(2nf0 t) + Bn sin(2nf0 t)] (1) ring angle (f ), as described in Fig. 4 [1].
When S2 is turned on and S1 is turned off, the load current at
n=1
PCC is the rectier current (iL2 ), as shown in Fig. 3(b), and its Fourier
In this case the Fourier series can be represented as: series is given by (6):


2 k0
iL2 (t) = [ek5 [k5 cos() sin()] ek5 [k5 cos() sin()]]
 k52 + 1
k3 k4

+ [cos(2) cos(2)] + [sin(2) sin(2) + 2 2] cos(t)
4 4

k0
+ [ek5 [k5 sin() cos()] ek5 [k5 sin() cos()]]
k52 + 1
k4 k3

+ [cos(2) cos(2)] + [sin(2) sin(2) + 2 2] sin(t)
4 4

 k0
+ [ek5 [k5 cos(n) n sin(n)] ek5 [k5 cos(n) n sin(n)]]
k52 + n2
n=3
 (6)
k3 cos(n + 1) cos(n + 1) cos(n 1) cos(n 1)
+ +
2 n+1 n1
 
k4 sin(n + 1) sin(n + 1) sin(n 1) sin(n 1)
+ + cos(nt)
2 n+1 n1

 k0
+ [ek5 [k5 sin(n) n cos(n)] ek5 [k5 sin(n) n cos(n)]]
k52 + n2
n=3

k4 cos(n + 1) cos(n + 1) cos(n 1) cos(n 1)
+ +
2 n+1 n1
  
k3 sin(n + 1) sin(n + 1) sin(n 1) sin(n 1)
+ + sin(nt)
2 n+1 n1

where is the delay angle and is the extinction angle of diodes,



dened by (7) and (8), being both constant due to the constant RC
x(t) = Cn sin(2nf0 t + n ) (2) load.
n=1 Remaining coefcients in (6) are determined by (9)(14). The
where the amplitudes and phase angles are given by: R2 resistance in (10) is the rectier input resistance, which models
 conductors and connections between power supply and rectier
Cn = A2n + Bn2 (3) input. Such resistances decrease the peak current drained by the
A  rectier, and thus must be considered in the system input model
n
n = tan1 (4) shown in Fig. 1. The measurement of R2 resulted in 0.47 . Varia-
Bn
tions in R2 value also lead to uncertainties in the current distortion
where n is a non-zero integer; f0 is the fundamental frequency; x(t) metering.
is the Fourier series term; An and Bn are the coefcients for the nth
order harmonic; Cn is the amplitude for the nth order harmonic; n = sin1 (sin()e[(+)/(RC)] ) (7)
is the phase angle for the nth order harmonic. = tan 1
(RC) (8)
In the single-phase system depicted in Fig. 1, when S1 is turned
k1 /
on and S2 is turned off, the resulting load current at PCC equals k0 = e [k3 sin() + k4 cos()] (9)
478 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482

Fig. 5. Simulated An coefcient for current at PCC.

Fig. 3. Simulated currents drained from power supply: (a) AC controller dimmer
and (b) full-bridge rectier.

1
1 1

k1 = + (10)
C R2 R

V
k2 = (11)
R2 C

1 k1 k2
k3 = V (12)
R2 k12 + 2

1 k2
k4 = (13)
R2 k12 + 2

k1
k5 = (14) Fig. 6. Simulated Bn coefcient for current at PCC.

Analytical An and Bn coefcients of load currents at PCC, when
both S1 and S2 switches are turned on, are shown in Figs. 5 and 6. The
obtained results are normalized relative to B1 module, when ring
angle equals to 0 . The amplitude variation of harmonics calculated
by (3) is shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 8 shows the THD curves from the load currents at PCC, in
function of dimmer ring angle. For ring angles close to 180 , THD
reaches its upper limit of 251% due to the prevalence of rectier
current over the dimmer current.
When only harmonic currents are present in power systems,
power factor PF can be dened by the product of harmonic distor-
tion factor (PFdist ) and displacement factor (PFdisp ), given by (15):
 
P 1
PF = = PFdist PFdisp =  [cos(1 1 )] (15)
S
1 + THD2 Fig. 7. Simulated harmonic amplitudes for current at PCC.

Fig. 4. Variation of the resistance R, as a function of the ring angle.

 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482
Fig. 8. THD of simulated load current at PCC.
where 1 and  1 are the phase difference between the fundamental
harmonic voltage and current. The PF is the ratio of the active power
P to the apparent power S.
Higher phase difference between voltage and current and higher
current distortion lead to limitation for the maximum active power
delivered by the utility grid [2], reducing its efciency. The PF is thus
degraded by the presence of harmonics, which is quantied by the
THD, given by (16):

I2
n=2 n
THD =
I1
where I1 and In are the RMS values for the fundamental current and
for its nth order harmonic, respectively.
Fig. 9 shows the power factor for each nonlinear load at PCC of
the modeled system, in function of dimmer ring angle. Rectier
exhibits low and invariable PF equals to 0.37, due to the invariant
values of R2 and RC. The dimmer PF starts from unitary value when
the ring angle equals to 0 , and then decreases as the ring angle
increases. The PF at PCC starts from 0.80 and decreases as the ring
angle increases, until it reaches a constant value, due to the reduced
impact of dimmer current when ring angle closes to 180 . These
results demonstrate the inuence of THD in PF, which is another
important PQ index for utilities and industrial consumers.
In this work, several tests and simulations were carried out
considering a wide range of dimmer ring angles. Analytical and
measurement data were used for the training pattern of the ANN,
in order to produce estimation data for current harmonic content
and for THD.
Fig. 9. The power factors of simulated load current at PCC.
479
Fig. 10. Block diagram for ANN-based method proposed.
3. ANN metering methodology
(16)
The use of articial neural networks has shown success in solv-
ing a series of engineering and science problems [2226] and brings
an alternative method to treat the problems related to PQ analysis.
ANN was applied to estimate the Fourier coefcients of experimen-
tal data in several works [10,1820], in order to calculate both the
harmonic content and the THD of nonlinear load current.
In this paper, An and Bn coefcients are estimated from load cur-
rent of both, the analytical model and the test bench measurements.
Phase and amplitude for the fundamental component and its rst
ve odd harmonics are calculated from the current at PCC, during
half-period of AC power supply voltage. However, it is possible to
determine a larger number of harmonic components, depending on
the precision required by THD calculation.
After the ANNs were trained and considering that the synap-
tic weights have been updated, the ANN structure was tested to
verify its solution generalization ability. The generalization error
is evaluated from the difference between ANN output signal and
the desired response. The cross-validation and the denominated
double cross-validation method [31,32] are employed in the ANN
training process. These methods can be used for the selection of
the model to predict An and Bn coefcients. In this work the double
cross-validation method was applied to minimize the number of
neurons used in each ANN.
In order to enhance the performance of the neural estimator, the
proposed method modies the cross-validation process, carrying
out ANN training using both, simulation and test data, but without
changing its structure. Thus, the system dynamics in which the ANN
must operate becomes implicit in the neural structure weights. This
new method proposed in this work is denominated double cross-
validation.
The block diagram shown in Fig. 10 depicts the proposed
methodology. Blocks 1 and 2 represent the Fourier analyzer of the
experimental and analytical load currents at PCC. Consequently, in
the mathematical model it is possible to shape the desired har-
monic content signal and use it as supervised training pattern
for the ANN, following the LevenbergMarquardt algorithm [36].
Blocks 3 and 8 represent the load current reconstructions in time
480 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482
Fig. 11. Neural system structure for the neural-network-method proposed.
domain. Block 7 is the data acquisition system assembled on a test
bench. The pre-processing of signal is done in the blocks 4 and 9
where the waveform of current signal is recreated and then sam-
pled in half-period of AC power supply voltage. These samples are
put in the training and weight adjusting stage of the ANN, per-
formed in block 5. Test data are used in block 6 for the double
cross-validation process of the ANN, which is trained using ana-
lytical and experimental data of the previous block. In block 10, the
ANN performs the estimation of Fourier coefcients of load current
and in the block 11 the THD of the power system is calculated and
presented.
Fig. 11 shows the neural structure for harmonic identication
using ANN. In this gure, a set of 42 samples of current signal is
acquired in half-period of the AC power supply voltage, resulting in
5.04 kHz sampling frequency. An ANN Multilayer Perceptron (MLP),
also with 42 inputs, reads the current signal samples. Each neural
estimator structure comprises 5 neurons in a single hidden layer,
and a single output neuron. For the estimation of nth harmonic
component, are necessary two neural structures, one for An esti-
mate and another to Bn estimate. Therefore, the neural system is
composed of 12 parallel neural structures: 6 with An outputs and 6
with Bn outputs (n = 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11).
The computation time depends on the number of operations as
well as on the computation platform chosen for the application.
The database is composed by 101 vectors, 90 of them obtained
from simulation data and 11 from test data. The 90 simulation
data vectors were used to carry out the ANN supervised back-
propagation training and the 11 test data vectors were used in the
validation stage.
The choice for the number of neurons depicted in Fig. 11 was
based on the cross-validation process [32]. After the convergence
Table 1
ANN training parameters for estimation of Fourier coefcients.
Network architecture 12 Multilayer Perceptrons (MLPs)
Training type Supervised
Training algorithm LevenbergMarquardt
Validation Double cross-validation
Activation function Hyperbolic tangent
Number of inputs for each MLP 42
Hidden layer (single) for each MLP 5 neurons
Output layer for each MLP 1 neuron
Learning rate 1 103
Training epochs 2000
Target error 1 103
of the cross-validation algorithm using the simulation data and spe-
cic objective error, the generalization result was then tested using
the experimental test data, which was not used in the training pro-
cess. Then, as a result of an optimization problem, the best hidden
neuron set for the neural network was choose amongst sets which
had shown good generalization result under small computational
effort.
Table 1 presents the parameters details used in the ANN train-
ing process. The number of vectors chosen was suitable for the ANN
training and test, representing the system dynamics in a satisfac-
tory fashion.
Test data used to validate the proposed model was obtained
by measurements in a test bench assembly. This structure is able
to acquire voltage and current data from a commercial dimmer
circuit feeding incandescent lamps, and from a full-bridge diode
rectier with RC load. All data were acquired using a NI-DSQ USB
6009 National Instruments data acquisition system, with Labview
software for PC interfacing. The Hall sensors employed to measure
currents and the limitations in dimmer ring angle are detailed in
[1]. The measurement result from iL (t) = iL1 (t) + iL2 (t), load current
at PCC, is shown in Fig. 12.
Thus, to carry out the harmonic evaluation using the proposed
method, the instantaneous current signal, sampled from dimmer
and rectier, must be introduced to the ANN, which estimates each
harmonic coefcient of the load current. Then the THD is calculated
using the determined harmonic components.
Results shown in Section 4 were obtained by the ANN using
An and Bn estimation. Convergence criterion was set to RMS error
values under 1 103 (or 2000 training epochs). This value was
chosen so that it allowed the adjustment of the synaptic weights
without causing overtting [32].
4. Experimental and simulation THD results
Results shown in this section compare both, the neural net-
work and the FFT methods, in order to validate the proposed
methodology. The FFT method algorithm requires additions and
multiplications using complex variables while MLP neural method
algorithm performs only real ones. Even considering a larger
number of multiplications to estimate the harmonic coefcients
[10,37], ANN implementation led to reduction in both com-
plexity and computational demand, when compared to FFT
implementation.
The average training time (ofine) of the ANN was 20 s using a
Pentium D CPU (clock 3.0 GHz to 1 GB of RAM). The generalization
results performed by the ANNs were obtained almost instanta-
neously.
Tables 2 and 3 show that the proposed ANN-based method
for THD metering is able to generalize solutions from FFT coef-
cient calculations. These results also show the estimated and target
output values from the load current at PCC, i.e. the sum of the
 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482 481

Fig. 12. Measurement results for load current at PCC of test bench.

Table 2
Fourier coefcients dimmer and rectier PCC (ring angle, 40 ).

Harmonic (n) Estimated Target

An Bn An Bn

1 0.05 0.98 0.07 0.96

3 0.11 0.37 0.10 0.38
5 0.18 0.20 0.21 0.20
7 0.14 0.22 0.14 0.18
9 0.22 0.21 0.20 0.18
11 0.23 0.09 0.24 0.10

Table 3
Fourier coefcients dimmer and rectier PCC (ring angle, 90 ).

Harmonic (n) Estimated Target

An Bn An Bn

1 0.21 0.81 0.22 0.74

3 0.12 0.38 0.16 0.32 Fig. 13. Current with target (a) and estimated (b) data.
5 0.11 0.34 0.07 0.29
7 0.17 0.27 0.11 0.24
9 0.23 0.20 0.18 0.18
Table 5 shows estimates for FFT coefcients of the load current
11 0.24 0.12 0.19 0.13
at PCC (Fig. 1). An and Bn coefcients are obtained by FFT analysis.
A1n and B1n coefcients are ANN estimates, trained using simu-
dimmer and the rectier currents at this point. Estimated Fourier lation data. Coefcients A2n and B2n are also ANN estimates, but
coefcients are in reasonably agreement with target ones, validat- trained using both simulation and test data, using the double cross-
ing the proposed online harmonic monitoring method for a known validation method. Using this method is possible to reduce the
load. relative error during online Fourier coefcients estimation process
Table 4 presents amplitude and phase values for the fundamen- of load current. The results obtained for the traditional method,
tal component and for its rst ve odd harmonics of the current at based on truncated FFT in the 6th term, and the proposal of this
PCC of the dimmer (f = 90 ) and rectier. These values were cal- work, using ANN, where both compared with FFT of 50th order.
culated by (3) and (4), and using target and estimates for these Both methods shown suitable results for THD evaluation, but com-
components, obtained from the output of ANN as presented in putational cost was smaller for the proposed ANN method.
Tables 2 and 3. Target values are obtained from (5) and (6). The performance of the proposed method for harmonic iden-
The waveforms illustrated in Fig. 13 are generated from the har- tication can be veried by THD and PF estimation, using target
monic components calculated using amplitudes and phases from and estimate values. Target THD is 77% and its estimate is 75%,
Table 4. Fig. 13(a) shows the load current waveform, iL (t), gener- resulting in 3.3% deviation error. Target PF is 0.75 and its estimate
ated using target coefcients obtained from measurements, while is 0.77, resulting in 2.5% error. Therefore, the ANN-based method
Fig. 13(b) shows the waveform generated using the estimated ones. proposed is able to predict the system behavior correctly, validating
its accuracy.

Table 4
Current amplitude and phase dimmer and rectier PCC.
Table 5
Harmonic (n) Target value ANN estimate ANN results for different training methods, and FFT results.

In (A)  n ( ) In (A)  n ( ) Harmonic (n) An A1n A2n Bn B1n B2n

1 2.07 17.55 2.34 15.00 1 0.12 0.13 0.11 0.92 0.93 0.93
3 0.93 150.52 0.88 155.08 3 0.05 0.04 0.05 0.43 0.41 0.41
5 0.74 12.80 0.89 14.33 5 0.24 0.19 0.22 0.26 0.26 0.24
7 0.66 154.98 0.75 152.16 7 0.19 0.12 0.15 0.16 0.17 0.15
9 0.63 44.97 0.73 47.79 9 0.18 0.15 0.17 0.13 0.20 0.17
11 0.56 121.46 0.63 119.64 11 0.19 0.17 0.19 0.12 0.18 0.17
482 C.F. Nascimento et al. / Applied Soft Computing 13 (2013) 475482
Fig. 14. Load current with random noise.
Additionally, the neural-network-method robustness was
tested under presence of noise on the sampled signal, as shown
in Fig. 14. For 10% in amplitude of random noise, the relative aver-
age error between the estimated output and target output for the
fundamental component was less than 6%. The result obtained for
the traditional method using truncated FFT in the 6th term was
very similar. Therefore, the ANN method shows good accuracy, even
when noise is present on data samples.
5. Conclusion
Analytical and experimental evaluation of harmonic content
and current total harmonic distortion measurement was carried
out in two nonlinear loads widely used in single-phase electronic
circuits. FFT coefcient estimation (An and Bn ), for fundamental
frequency and its rst ve odd harmonic components (amplitude
and phase), was obtained from ANN methodology in nonlinear and
time-varying loads using only half-period of fundamental current
signal.
The proposed neural-network-method was able to evaluate the
harmonic content of the currents efciently. These currents were
drawn by nonlinear load composed by a dimmer and a recti-
er, both connected in a single-phase power system. The results
obtained by means of the ANN method are in good agreement to
those obtained from FFT method, showing its applicability to har-
monic monitoring. Generalization results were obtained using the
neural proposed method.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the nancial support received from
CNPq under 480352/2010-0, 471825/2009-3 and 474290/2008-5
processes and from Araucaria Foundation under 06/56093-3
process.
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