Unbalanced Source Detection in Power Distribution Networks by Negative Sequence Apparent Powers

Distribution network unbalanced operation is among crucial power quality concerns. Detecting the unbalance sources and their contribution to the network total unbalance with high precision is a prerequisite to alleviate this challenge. To do so, this letter proposes a new method based on load and branch negative sequence apparent power vectors. The inner product decomposition algorithm is employed to specify the contribution of each downstream unbalanced load on a given branch or node unbalance index. Accordingly, the unbalanced loads compensating for the others can also be discriminated. Referring to simulations, the proposed method outperforms the existing techniques in terms of efficiency and accuracy.