Real-Time Digital Compensation of Current Transformers Over a Wide Frequency Range

Abstract

The advance in power electronics causes, over the years, an increasing diffusion of nonlinear loads. Moreover, electrical generation systems are going to include a growing amount of solar and wind energy, characterized by time-variant flow of energy and, very often, with a relevant distortion. These aspects give more and more emphasis to the monitoring of conducted disturbances on power systems over a wide frequency range, and consequently, voltage and current transducers adopted for this aim must have a proper frequency bandwidth. Voltage transformers (VTs) and current transformers (CTs), which are the most installed transducers in electrical power systems, are typically constructed to operate only at the industrial frequency, i.e., 50/60 Hz, but it is clear that their substitution would require an unsustainable cost. Therefore, in this paper, a method for real-time digital compensation of the CT frequency response over a wide range is presented. An implementation of the proposed method is shown, and the compensated CT is characterized and tested in some practical situations, with waveforms affected by typical power quality disturbances.