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Abstract—The impact of motor starting on power quality can be curve [8], the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)
assessed using detailed computer simulation studies. However, not curve [9], and the IEC/IEEE flicker standards [10].
every motor installation case needs such an extensive assessment. The voltage sag and flicker effects of motor starting can be as-
Utility planners are interested in quick evaluation of the potential
sessed by detailed system simulations [11], [12]. However, this
impact of a motor installation proposal. Based on the findings, they
can then determine if detailed case studies and what types of case process is complicated and time-consuming in practice. In many
studies are necessary. This paper presents three charts for motor cases, utilities and motor users are more interested in a simpler
starting planning according to three power quality concerns. These and faster method for a first-cut understanding of the potential
concerns are the amount of voltage drop caused by motor starting, impact of a motor starting situation [13], [14]. With limited in-
the compliance to the ITIC curve, and the compliance to the IEC formation available, the method shall reveal whether an induc-
flicker meter limits. These charts can help utility planers to con- tion motor application may cause any power quality problem. If
duct quick and first-cut assessment of a motor starting situation.
They also reveal the key factors affecting the motor starting related
the results indicate violations of voltage sag or flicker limits, a
power quality concerns. The principles behind these charts are ex- detailed investigation can then be undertaken.
plained. Examples are given to show how to use them for quick A simple method utilizing the constant energy criterion to
assessment of motor starting impact. estimate the voltage sag impact of induction motor starting was
Index Terms—Flicker, motor starting, power quality (PQ), described in [15]. Although the method simplifies the motor
voltage sag. starting analysis, it is not intuitive enough for quick motor
starting assessment. This is partially due to the fact that two key
parameters, motor size and system short-circuit level, are not
I. INTRODUCTION explicitly used. In addition, the applied specific energy curve
OWER-QUALITY issues caused by induction motor [16] has relative large error compared with the ITIC curve,
P starting have been recognized and investigated for a long
time. It is known that direct motor starting typically produces
which was recently designated to replace the CBEMA curve.
In North America, the historic flicker curves [17], [18] have
voltage sags with a duration longer than 30 cycles, especially been gradually replaced by the IEC flicker assessment method
when a large size motor with high inertia load is connected to a [19]. The IEC method requires the implementation of a sophis-
weak power system [1]–[6]. Such long duration sags can lead ticated flicker meter scheme which is designed mainly for mea-
to a wide range of sensitive equipment to drop out [7]. In addi- surement purposes. Little work has been done on how to apply
tion, voltage flicker may arise because of frequent or sporadic the IEC flicker meter to the planning process.
motor starting. Whenever an induction motor is connected or In this paper, a systematic and practical method to evaluate
started, system planning engineers are interested to know if the effect of voltage sag and flicker generated by induction
the motor starting would result in the unacceptable voltage motor starting is presented. Analytical approaches are used
sags and flicker according to the restriction of the established to derive charts that can provide a quick and first-cut under-
power acceptability curves or standards, such as the Computer standing of the potential impact of a motor starting situation.
The paper is organized as follows. Three motor starting guide-
& Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA)
line charts are proposed in Section II. The use of the charts is
also explained in this section. Sections III–V present the devel-
Manuscript received October 14, 2009; revised July 12, 2010; accepted opment process of the guideline charts for three types of power
November 21, 2010. Date of current version March 25, 2011. This work was
supported by Alberta power industry. Paper no. TPWRD-00777-2009. quality concerns: voltage drop, voltage sag and voltage flicker,
X. Wang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, State Key Lab respectively. Sensitivity studies results are also presented
of Power Systems, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: xi- in these sections. Since the proposed methods are based on
aoyuw@tsinghua.edu.cn).
J. Yong is with the State Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment simplifications, electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations
and System Security and New Technology, Chongqing University, Chongqing are used in Section VI to validate the proposed charts. The
400044, China (e-mail: yongjingcq@yahoo.com.cn). conclusions are summarized in Section VII.
W. Xu is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Uni-
versity of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2V4, Canada (e-mail: wxu@ualberta.
ca).
W. Freitas is with the Department of Electrical Energy Systems, University
II. PRACTICAL CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT
of Campinas, Campinas 13083-852, Brazil (e-mail: walmir@ieee.org). The direct motor starting applies the network voltage to the
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. motor terminal directly. Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2010.2096237 a real-life direct motor starting case. This case involves a 25 kV
0885-8977/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
800 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011
(4)
(5)
Fig. 5. Equivalent circuit for voltage drop amount assessment.
Also we can assume and
(where and are the stator resistance and reactance,
2 times per hour. In this case, the motor starting frequency is and are the rotor resistance and reactance, respectively,
less than once per 10 minutes so that the curve cannot be and the shunt magnetization impedance is neglected). Based on
used. The curve will be applied for this case. Point B in Fig. the above circuit, the voltage level at the PCC, , can be esti-
4(b) can be found to represent the motor starting case. Fig. 4(b) mated, which can be symbolically represented as
reveals that point B is above the curve and within
the region with flicker concern. As a result, the flicker problem (6)
could happen.
The boundary curves of the proposed guideline charts are es- Since we are interested in determining the system size
tablished using different power quality limits at the PCC. All the for a given or threshold, the above equation can be re-
charts are developed by considering the worst case voltage vio- arranged to show the relationship of as a function of and
lation conditions and the motor starting characteristics. Details and other parameters. Based on the procedure shown in Ap-
on the derivation of the curves are described in the following pendix B, such a relationship can be established as:
sections.
(7)
III. DEVELOPMENT OF THE VOLTAGE DROP CHART
where
A. Chart Derivation
In order to construct the voltage drop chart, one has to execute
two steps: (1) determine the system parameters based only on
the motor size and on the system short-circuit level at the PCC
and (2) create the chart based on a simple formula with the re-
lationship between the system short-circuit level and the motor
size. The system presented in Fig. 1 will be used as an example.
Fig. 5 shows the equivalent circuit of the example system. In these expressions, represents the open circuit voltage at
Initially, the following parameters are usually known for the the PCC and represents the PCC voltage level at the instant of
motor starting analysis: motor energization. The short-circuit level for different voltage
• Motor size— (MVA). drop limits imposed by the distribution utility can be obtained
• System short-circuit level at the PCC— (MVA). using these expressions. For the chart developed in this paper
In order to evaluate the motor starting impact the impedance and (i.e., ) are used. Other
parameters shown in Fig. 5 must be determined based only on parameters used for generating the basic chart shown in Fig. 2
the available information. First, we represent the system equiv- are: , , , 6, .
alent impedance based on the ratio and the
system ratio, which are known. Thus, and referred B. Sensitivity Analysis
to the motor size can be calculated as follows: The development process of the chart shows that the chart
is sensitive to the system ratio , transformer reactance
(1) (determined by the parameters of and ), motor starting
power factor , motor starting inrush current coefficient .
(2) Sensitivity studies on these factors were conducted, and the re-
sults are reported in the following figures.
where is the system ratio. Fig. 6 presents the chart for different ratios of the
If we assume that the rated capacity of the transformer short-circuit level seen from the PCC. This figure shows that
is times the motor size , and that the transformer percent the lower the ratio is, the higher the maximum allowable
impedance referred to the transformer base is , then the trans- motor size is for the same . This phenomenon is expected
former impedance referred to the motor size is as the lower the ratio, which is equivalent to a smaller
reactance and a higher resistance , the lower the reactive
(3) power losses in the system impedance. Consequently, the reac-
tive power delivered to the motor can be reduced, allowing the
Assuming that the inrush current of the motor is times increase of the maximum motor capacity. Fig. 7 presents the
the motor rated current and that the initial motor power factor chart considering different sizes of the step-down transformer
WANG et al.: PRACTICAL PQ CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT 803
Fig. 6. X=R ratio sensitivity (k = 6; cos ' = 0:2; = 1:2;
= 5%). ; ' = 0:2; = 1:2;
=
Fig. 8. Inrush current factor sensitivity ( = 10 cos
5%).
Fig. 9. Motor power factor sensitivity ( = 10 ;k = 6; = 1:2;
= 5%).
k ;
Fig. 7. Transformer size sensitivity ( = 6 cos ' = 0:2; = 10;
= 5%).
(8)
(9)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
VI. VALIDATION RESULTS
In the IEC standards, should be smaller than the planning The section presents the EMT simulation results executed in
level 0.9 in MV system and the evaluation time for is 10 PSCAD/EMTDC to verify the accuracy and limitations of the
min. With these two conditions, the boundary flicker curve with proposed power quality charts for motor starting. The real case
, shown in Fig. 4(a), can be plotted based on (15). shown in Fig. 1 is employed to run the simulation. The field data
Similarly, the value of can also be calculated by using (12) of the distribution system are listed in Table I of Appendix A
by replacing the evaluation time segment with 2 hours and the selected motor data [24] are shown in Table II of Ap-
pendix C. The comparisons are summarized as follows.
(16)
A. Simulation Results for the Voltage Drop Chart
Then, (15) will be changed as follows for the flicker curve: In Fig. 13(a), the following four cases are analyzed with the
voltage drop chart:
Case 1 (1500 hp); ;
(17) Case 2 (500 hp); ;
Case 3 (100 hp); ;
The planning level limit for is suggested as 0.7 by IEC Case 4 (500 hp); .
[23]. The flicker curve developed from (17) is shown in Fig. The parameters used to plot the chart are 3, 6.8,
4(b) where . When the maximum voltage drop amount , 5.5, and 0.3. From Fig. 13(a) one
is determined by the flicker curves, the maximum motor size can see that Case 1 and Case 2 are in the region with PQ
related to this voltage drop amount can be checked from the concern whereas Case 3 and Case 4 are in the region without
flicker chart. PQ concern. The detailed motor starting situation for the four
806 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011
Fig. 14. Voltage sag chart determined by repetitive EMT simulations and by
the proposed formulas ( = 10; cos ' = 0:2; = 1:2;
= 5%).
TABLE I
DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM PARAMETERS
VII. CONCLUSIONS
(18)
Induction motor starting draws high inrush current from
the system, which may result in an unacceptable voltage drop
808 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011
TABLE II [12] X. Yang and M. Kratz, “Power system flicker analysis by RMS voltage
THREE-PHASE MOTOR PARAMETERS (4.16 kV) values and numeric flicker meter emulation,” IEEE Trans. Power Del.,
vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 1310–1318, Jul. 2009.
[13] X. Yang and J. Gauthier, “How can flicker level be determined before a
customer is connected to the electric grid,” in Proc. IEEE Power Energy
Soc. Gen. Meeting, Calgary, AB, Canada, 2009, pp. 1–6.
[14] A. Polycarpou and H. Nouri, “Validation of a proposed voltage sag
prediction methodology for interconnected systems during motor
starting,” in Proc. 44th Int. Universities Power Engineering Conf.,
Glasgow, U.K., 2009, pp. 1–5.
[15] J. C. Gomez and M. M. Morcos, “Voltage sag effects on sensitive equip-
ment due to starting cycles of induction motor,” IEEE Power Eng. Rev.,
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(20) [18] “1C.5.1—Voltage Fluctuation and Light Flicker, PacifiCorp Engi-
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File/File57576.pdf
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61000-4-15, 2003.
[20] Distribution Point-of-Delivery Interconnection Process Guideline-
Standards of Service, Alberta Electric System Operator. [Online].
(21) Available: http://www.aeso.ca/files/FINALStandardsofServiceRevi-
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value because , , and . Thus, only (7) is Hill, 1994.
considered in the analysis [23] Assessment of Emission Limits for Fluctuating Loads in MV and HV
Power Systems—Basic EMC Publication, IEC Std. 1000-3-7, 1996.
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Table II lists the motor parameters used in the simulations.
REFERENCES Xiaoyu Wang (M’08) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engi-
[1] M. H. J. Bollen, Understanding Power Quality Problems: Voltage Sags neering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000 and 2003, respec-
and Interruptions. New York: IEEE Press, 1999. tively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the
[2] M. F. McGranaghan, D. R. Mueller, and M. J. Samotyj, “Voltage University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2008.
sags in industrial systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 29, no. 2, pp. Currently, he is an Assistant Researcher at Tsinghua University. His research
397–403, Mar./Apr. 1993. interests include distributed generation and power quality.
[3] J. Lamoree, D. Mueller, P. Vinett, W. Jones, and M. Samotyj, “Voltage
sags analysis case studies,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 30, no. 4, pp.
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[4] J. C. Gomez, C. Reineri, G. Campetelli, and M. M. Morcos, “A study Jing Yong (M’08) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
of voltage sags generated by induction motor starting,” Elect. Power engineering from Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, in 1985, 1988, and
Compon. Syst., vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 645–653, Jun. 2004. 2007, respectively.
[5] C. Hsu, H. Chuang, and C. Chen, “Power quality assessment of large She has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta since 2008.
motor starting and loading for the integrated steel-making cogeneration Her current interest is power quality.
facility,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 395–402, Mar. 2007.
[6] X. Liang and O. Ilochonwu, “Induction motor starting in practical in-
dustrial applications,” in Proc. IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power
Systems Technical Conf., Tallahassee, FL, 2010, pp. 1–10. Wilsun Xu (M’90–SM’95–F’05) received the Ph.D. degree from the University
[7] R. F. McElveen and M. K. Tony, “Starting high-inertia loads,” IEEE of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1989.
Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 137–144, Jan./Feb. 2001. He was an Engineer with BC Hydro from 1990 to 1996. Currently, he is a
[8] G. Lee, M. M. Albu, and G. Heydt, “A power quality index based on Professor and an NSERC/iCORE Industrial Research Chair at the University of
equipment sensitivity, cost, and network vulnerability,” IEEE Trans. Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. His research interests are power quality and
Power Del., vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 1504–1510, Jul. 2004. harmonics.
[9] ITI (CBEMA) Curve Application Notes. Washington, DC: Inf. Tech.
Ind. Council, 2000.
[10] S. M. Halpin, R. Bergeron, T. M. Blooming, R. F. Burch, L. E. Conrad,
and T. S. Key, “Voltage and lamp flicker issues: Should the IEEE Walmir Freitas (M’02) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
adopt the IEC approach?,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. the University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil, in 2001.
1088–1097, Jul. 2003. From 2002 to 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Al-
[11] S. M. Halpin and R. F. Burch, “An improved simulation approach for berta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. Currently, he is an Associate Professor with the
the analysis of voltage flicker and the evaluation of mitigation strate- University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil. His research interests are the anal-
gies,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 1285–1291, Jul. 1997. ysis of distribution systems and distributed generation.