Voltage Unbalance Measurement in Three-Phase Smart Meter Applied to AMI systems

Natthanan Tangsunantham and Chaiyod Pirak

The Sirindhorn International Thai-Germen Graduate School of Engineering (TGGS) King Mongkuts University of Technology North Bangkok 1518 Pibulsongkram Road, Bangsue, Bangkok 10800, Thailand
deep_commu@hotmail.com, chaiyodp@kmutnb.ac.th Abstract Recently, renewable energy and distributed generation (DG) are of interest for electricity grid. Besides the benefit of DG, the power qualities generated by DG have to be carefully managed and monitored because, otherwise, the unmanaged DG would cause the reliability and efficiency issues to the grid. A three-phase voltage unbalance factor (VUF) is a basic power quality in the smart grid and micro grid, which are monitored and managed by the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system by using metering devices such as a smart meter. In this paper, the VUF measurement in the threephase smart meter is investigated by using a single chip solution from ADE7878 Analog Devices. The three-phase voltage unbalance is calculated and compared based on the definition of VUF defined by NEMA, IEEE and IEC standards. From experimental results, the voltage unbalance measurement in the three-phase meter is highly accurate, flexible, and low cost. Therefore, the studied VUF measurement is well applicable to the three-phase smart meter in order to monitor and manage the power quality in the smart grid and microgrid. Keywords Smart Gird, Three-Phase Smart Meter, Voltage Unbalance Measurement

I. INTRODUCTION Over the last few decades, the increasing consumption of electricity is the fastest growing component of the total global energy demand. In the near future, the worlds electricity system challenges are reliability, efficiency and demand response in the grid. A smart grid technology, which is the driving force towards a low-carbon energy in many countries, is one of emerging technologies that could solve these challenges. In addition, the development of a renewable and cleaner energy supply for more energy efficient, more affordable, and more sustainable is realized. In South Korea, the government has launched a pilot project on Jeju Island, and announced a plan to implement the smart grid nationwide by 2030 [1]. The smart grid pilot project in Thailand has been planned to implement a smart meter, an energy storage and a micro grid in between 2012 to 2016, and implement the smart grid and the smart public charging station by 2026 [2]. The smart grid is a modern electricity grid which encompasses with many systems such as the information and communication technology (ICT), the renewable and distributed generation, the transmission enhancement

applications, the distribution grid management, the advance metering infrastructure (AMI), the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, and the customer-side systems (CS) for monitoring and managing the distribution of electricity [3]. AMI is a system in the smart grid which is able to measure, store, analyze the energy consumption, and manage the smart meter operation and communication networks [4]. A micro grid is an electricity grid, which is considered as a sub-system in the smart grid, that integrates the energy storage and DG, such as a photovoltaic and wind turbine to serve a small group of customers and sustain the power distribution in the smart grid. Besides the benefit of the micro grid, the improper power generation could affect the power quality in the grid, such as a harmonic distortion and a voltage unbalance. In order to measure such power qualities, the smart meter could be used, and the measured information could be monitored over the AMI systems. The voltage unbalance in a three-phase system is a condition when the voltage magnitude at the fundamental frequency is deviated from a nominal voltage, or the voltage magnitude at the fundamental phase angle is deviated from the angle between phase sequences, or the voltage levels of harmonic distortion is deviated from the acceptable limits of nominal [5]-[7]. The unbalanced voltage can cause a serious problem particularly to motors and other inductive devices [7]. The main effect of voltage unbalance in motor damaging is the overheating effect in the rotor, by which the motor current to insulation breakdown of the motor is increased. The negative effects are the increased line-loss of the three-phase system and the power quality degradation. In order to analyze and calculate the voltage unbalance, there are three widely used methods for voltage unbalance measurement, including the phase voltage unbalance rate (PVUR) defined by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the line voltage unbalance rate (LVUR) defined by NEMA (National Equipment Manufacturers Association) and the percentage voltage unbalance factor (VUF) defined by IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). All of them are used to measure the voltage unbalance in the system, depending on which standard has been referred to. In this paper, the voltage unbalance measurement in the three-phase smart meter using a single-chip high precision

978-1-4799-0545-4/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

three-phase electrical energy measurement IC is proposed. Advantages using the single-chip IC consist of a flexibility for system integration, a low-cost implement, and a high accuracy. This paper is organized as follows. The definition of voltage unbalance is described in Section II. The measurement of voltage unbalance in the three-phase smart meter is described in Section III. Experimental results are shown in Section IV, and the paper is concluded in Section V. II. DEFINITION OF VOLTAGE UNBALANCE In this section, the definition of voltage unbalance will be examined. A. NEMA Definition The NEMA definition of voltage unbalance is the line voltage unbalance rate (LVUR) which assumes the average voltage is always equal to the rated value. LVUR calculates only a magnitude; however, a phase angle is not included, which is given by (1) max imum voltage deviation from the average line voltage
% LVUR = average line voltage 100

The two balanced components are given by

Vab + aVbc + a 2Vca 3 2 V + a Vbc + aVca . Vn = ab 3 Vp =

and

(5) (6)

The VUF formulation is given in IEC 61000-4-30, as follows

%VUF =

1 3 6 1 + 3 6
2 ab

100 ,

(7)

4 4 4 where = | Vab | + | Vbc | + | Vac | . 2

(| V

2 2 | + | Vbc | + | Vac |)

B. IEEE Definition The IEEE definition of voltage unbalance is the phase voltage unbalance rate (PVUR) which is similar to the NEMA definition, except the phase voltage is used rather than the line-to-line voltage. PVUR calculation is given by (2) max imum voltage deviation from the average phase voltage
% PVUR = average phase voltage 100

C. IEC Definition The IEC definition of voltage unbalance is the percentage voltage unbalance factor (VUF), which is the ratio of the negative sequence voltage component to the positive sequence voltage component. This definition is used for the calculation of the voltage unbalance in this paper. VUF calculation is given by V negative sequence voltage component %VUF = 100 = n 100 (3)
positive sequence voltage component Vp

The symmetrical transformation giving the sequence components of three-phase voltages could be expressed as

Vz 1 1 1 2 Vn = 3 1 a V p 1 a

1 Vab , a Vbc a2 Vca

(4)

where Vz stands for the zero sequence voltage component, Vn stands for the negative sequence voltage component, Vp stands for the positive sequence voltage component, Vab stands for the voltage between phase A and B, Vac stands for the voltage between phase A and C, Vbc stands for the voltage between phase B and C,

equals 1120D and

a 2 equals

III. VOLTAGE UNBALANCE MEASUREMENT IN THREE-PHASE SMART METER In this section, the implementation of the three-phase smart meter with voltage unbalance measurement will be described. The structure of the three-phase smart meter with voltage unbalance measuring capability by using a single chip solution is shown in Fig.1. The designed three-phase smart meter is applicable to the three-phase four-wire system. It can be divided into four sections, including a power supply section, a micro controller unit (MCU) section, a sensing section, and a communication section. The power supply section is three-phase switching power supply with the surge protection. The communication section consists of two communication ports, including an isolated RS485 port and a Zigbee port. The MCU section employs STM32L152RB STmicroelectronics, which is the high-performance ARM CortexTM-M3 32-bit and ultra-low-power MCU. In addition, STM32L152RB features the 32 MHz clock frequency with various advanced communication interfaces; including up to two I2C and SPI interfaces, three USART interfaces, and a USB interface. Furthermore, the integrated LCD controller has a built-in LCD voltage generator, in which the contrast is independent of the supply voltage. The sensing section employs a single chip solution ADE7878 Analog Devices. ADE7878 is the high accuracy three-phase electrical energy measurement IC with less than 0.1% error in rms voltage and current measurement over a dynamic range of 1000 to 1 at T=25oC, which supports multiple standards of EN 50470-1, EN 50470-3, IEC 6205321, IEC 62053-22 and IEC 62053-23. It can transfer data to MCU with SPI interface at a speed of 2.5 MHz. Furthermore, it could measure the active and reactive power, the active and reactive energy, the rms voltage and current, the power factor, the angle between phase A, B and C. It also has the capability of measuring the time delay between phase voltages, between phase currents, and between voltages and currents of the same phase with the resolution of

1240D

Fig.1. Structure of three-phase smart meter with voltage unbalance measurement

Fig.2 Angles between phase voltages

Fig.3 Structure of input phase voltage

3.90625 s (at 256 kHz clock) per LSB bit. The delay between phase voltages is used to compute the angle between phase voltage, given by

The reading values from AVRMS, BVRMS and CRMS registers can be converted into voltage values VAP, as shown in Fig.3, using the V/LSB constants, expressed as

x x = ANGLEx

360o f LINE , 256 kHz

(8)

V / LSB constant =
VFS = 0.5 ( R3 + R4 ) , R3 2

VFS , 4,191,910

(9) (10) (11)

where f LINE = 50 Hz and x x stands for the angle between phase voltage, as shown in Fig. 2. A root mean square (rms) is a measurement of the magnitude of an AC signal in this paper. In ADE7878, a signal processing will use the calculation of rms voltage on one of the phases of the voltage channel, which are stored by 24 signed bit registers, namely AVRMS, BVRMS and CRMS registers, for determining a voltage unbalance. The update rate of the rms measurement is 8 kHz. The accuracy of the rms current is typically of 0.1% error from the full-scale input down to 1/1000 of the full-scale input. With the specified fullscale analog input signal of 0.5 V, the analog to digital conversion (ADC) will produce an output code that is approximately equal to 5,928, 256 . The equivalent rms value of full-scale sinusoidal signal is equal to 4,191,910 (0x3FF6A6).

VAP =V / LSB constant AVRMS ,

where R3 and R4 are the resistor divider components, as shown in Fig.3, and 0.5 V is the maximum allowed voltage at ADC input. The V/LSB constant depends on the full-scale voltage (VFS) in voltage channel. It is worth noticing that the calculated VAP is the line-to-neutral voltage, which has to be converted to the line-to-line voltage, by using trigonometry theory [8], as shown in Fig.4., as follows

| VAB |= (| VAN | | VBN | cos( AB )) 2 + (| VBN | sin( AB )) 2 | VAC |= (| VAN | | VCN | cos( AC )) 2 + (| VCN | sin( AC )) 2 | VBC |= (| VBN | | VCN | cos( BC )) 2 + (| VCN | sin( BC )) 2

(12) (13) (14)

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS In order to show the performance of voltage unbalance measurement (based on the definition of voltage unbalance in section II) in the three-phase smart meter, as shown in Fig.5, the experiment has been carried out with the real voltage unbalance environment by using three sets of variac. The setup phase for the first variac is = 120o , the setup phase for the second variac is BC , phase for the third variac is AC = 120o . In Table I, the range of voltage unbalance calculated by three methodologies, including LVUR, PVUR, and VUF, is compared with the VUF measurement from the three-phase smart meter. It is worth noticing that three different voltage unbalances are almost the same in the case of low voltage unbalance. However, in the case of higher voltage unbalance, the calculated VUF and the measured VUF yield a closed result, while the others yield the unacceptable results. This fact implies that the VUF calculated by IEC definition and the VUF measured by the three-phase smart meter are consistent and applicable to the real applications. It is also worth noticing that there is some minor differences in the calculated and measured VUF.
o = 120 and the setup
AB

Fig.4 Voltage phasor diagram

where VAB , VBC , VAC stand for phase voltages, for phase A,B, and C, respectively; VAN ,VBN ,VCN stand for neutral voltages, for phase A,B, and C, respectively;

AB , BC , AC stand for

angles between phase A,B and C, for phase A,B, and C, respectively.

Fig.5 Voltage unbalance measurement in a three-phase smart meter

V. CONCLUSION In this paper, the designed three-phase smart meter with voltage unbalance measurement using a single chip solution from ADE7878 Analog Devices has been proposed. The three-phase voltage unbalance is calculated and compared based on the definition of VUF defined by NEMA, IEEE, and IEC standards in the three-phase smart meter. From experimental results, it is worth noticing that three different voltage unbalances are almost the same in the case of low voltage unbalance, i.e. VUF (calculation) = 2.16697 % , LVUR = 2.05317 % , PVUR = 3.211 % , and VUF (measurement) = 2.05431 % . However, in the case of higher voltage unbalance, VUF and the measured VUF yield a closed result, while the others yield the unacceptable results, i.e. VUF (calculation) = 17.87377 % , LVUR = 9.721813 % , PVUR = 35.7664 % , and VUF (measurement) = 18.16673 % . Therefore, the measured VUF from the designed three-phase smart meter is effectively agreed with the calculated VUF in IEC definition. Hence, the designed three-phase smart meter with voltage unbalance measurement could be effectively applied to AMI systems for power quality monitoring and management. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge information and financial support under Research and Development Project of Smart Meter Applied to AMI Systems from Provincial Electrical Authority (PEA), Thailand.

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