IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO.
2, APRIL 2011
Practical Power Quality Charts
for Motor Starting Assessment
Xiaoyu Wang, Member, IEEE, Jing Yong, Member, IEEE, Wilsun Xu, Fellow, IEEE, and
Walmir Freitas, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The impact of motor starting on power quality can be
assessed using detailed computer simulation studies. However, not
every motor installation case needs such an extensive assessment.
Utility planners are interested in quick evaluation of the potential
impact of a motor installation proposal. Based on the findings, they
can then determine if detailed case studies and what types of case
studies are necessary. This paper presents three charts for motor
starting planning according to three power quality concerns. These
concerns are the amount of voltage drop caused by motor starting,
the compliance to the ITIC curve, and the compliance to the IEC
flicker meter limits. These charts can help utility planers to con-
duct quick and first-cut assessment of a motor starting situation.
They also reveal the key factors affecting the motor starting related
power quality concerns. The principles behind these charts are ex-
plained. Examples are given to show how to use them for quick
assessment of motor starting impact.
Index Terms—Flicker, motor starting, power quality (PQ),
voltage sag.
I. INTRODUCTION
OWER-QUALITY issues caused by induction motor
P starting have been recognized and investigated for a long
time. It is known that direct motor starting typically produces
voltage sags with a duration longer than 30 cycles, especially
when a large size motor with high inertia load is connected to a
weak power system [1]–[6]. Such long duration sags can lead
to a wide range of sensitive equipment to drop out [7]. In addi-
tion, voltage flicker may arise because of frequent or sporadic
motor starting. Whenever an induction motor is connected or
started, system planning engineers are interested to know if
the motor starting would result in the unacceptable voltage
sags and flicker according to the restriction of the established
power acceptability curves or standards, such as the Computer
& Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA)
Manuscript received October 14, 2009; revised July 12, 2010; accepted
November 21, 2010. Date of current version March 25, 2011. This work was
supported by Alberta power industry. Paper no. TPWRD-00777-2009.
X. Wang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, State Key Lab
of Power Systems, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: xi-
aoyuw@tsinghua.edu.cn).
J. Yong is with the State Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment
and System Security and New Technology, Chongqing University, Chongqing
400044, China (e-mail: yongjingcq@yahoo.com.cn).
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
of Campinas, Campinas 13083-852, Brazil (e-mail: walmir@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2010.2096237
0885-8977/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
799
curve [8], the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC)
curve [9], and the IEC/IEEE flicker standards [10].
The voltage sag and flicker effects of motor starting can be as-
sessed by detailed system simulations [11], [12]. However, this
process is complicated and time-consuming in practice. In many
cases, utilities and motor users are more interested in a simpler
and faster method for a first-cut understanding of the potential
impact of a motor starting situation [13], [14]. With limited in-
formation available, the method shall reveal whether an induc-
tion motor application may cause any power quality problem. If
the results indicate violations of voltage sag or flicker limits, a
detailed investigation can then be undertaken.
A simple method utilizing the constant energy criterion to
estimate the voltage sag impact of induction motor starting was
described in [15]. Although the method simplifies the motor
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
explicitly used. In addition, the applied specific energy curve
[16] has relative large error compared with the ITIC curve,
which was recently designated to replace the CBEMA curve.
In North America, the historic flicker curves [17], [18] have
been gradually replaced by the IEC flicker assessment method
[19]. The IEC method requires the implementation of a sophis-
ticated flicker meter scheme which is designed mainly for mea-
surement purposes. Little work has been done on how to apply
the IEC flicker meter to the planning process.
In this paper, a systematic and practical method to evaluate
the effect of voltage sag and flicker generated by induction
motor starting is presented. Analytical approaches are used
to derive charts that can provide a quick and first-cut under-
standing of the potential impact of a motor starting situation.
The paper is organized as follows. Three motor starting guide-
line charts are proposed in Section II. The use of the charts is
also explained in this section. Sections III–V present the devel-
opment process of the guideline charts for three types of power
quality concerns: voltage drop, voltage sag and voltage flicker,
respectively. Sensitivity studies results are also presented
in these sections. Since the proposed methods are based on
simplifications, electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations
are used in Section VI to validate the proposed charts. The
conclusions are summarized in Section VII.
II. PRACTICAL CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT
The direct motor starting applies the network voltage to the
motor terminal directly. Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of
a real-life direct motor starting case. This case involves a 25 kV
800
Fig. 1. Diagram of direct motor starting in power distribution systems.
Fig. 2. Voltage drop chart for motor starting assessment.
distribution feeder typically seen in rural North America. The
parameters of this system are listed in Appendix A. A 1.1 MW
(1500 hp) induction motor is planned to be connected to the
feeder. The voltage quality at the point of common coupling
(PCC) is of concern during the starting process of the motor
in Fig. 1. Three guideline charts proposed in this paper can be
used to quickly assess the motor starting from the perspective
of voltage drop, voltage sag and flicker limitations. The voltage
drop chart is designed to address the concern on the amount of
voltage drop caused by motor starting. The voltage sag chart
considers both the voltage drop amount and the sag duration
according to the ITIC curve. The flicker chart is developed based
on the IEC flicker limit.
A. Use of Voltage Drop Chart
According to utility practices [20], a motor starting procedure
that causes a voltage drop of 5% or more at the PCC during the
starting process is not acceptable. The voltage drop chart is de-
veloped for utility planners to quickly determine if a motor in-
stallation scenario will result in unacceptable voltage drop (i.e.,
greater than 5%). The proposed chart is a set of curves whose
x-axis is the motor capacity and y-axis is the system short-circuit
level at the PCC. Fig. 2 displays the simplest and a conserva-
tively constructed chart, which has only one curve. This curve
indicates a boundary above which the impact of direct motor
starting can be considered as insignificant in terms of voltage
drop amount, while below which direct motor starting could
cause a voltage drop exceeding 5%. Detailed motor starting
analysis is therefore recommended for the latter case.
As an example, we consider the case shown in Fig. 1 where
the system short-circuit level is 28 MVA at the PCC and a 1.1
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011
Fig. 3. Voltage sag chart for motor starting assessment.
MW motor is to be installed at the PCC through a step down
transformer. A point (1.1 MW, 28 MVA) can be drawn in the
chart, which is shown as a red circle in Fig. 2. This point re-
sides in the region with power quality (PQ) concern. Thus it can
be concluded that the 1.1 MW motor is likely to cause exces-
sive voltage drop at the PCC when the motor is directly started.
Consequently, detailed motor starting analysis is recommended
to further investigate the voltage drop problem.
B. Use of Voltage Sag Chart
Considering the voltage drop amount alone is not sufficient
to understand the impact of motor starting, since the severity
of a voltage sag event is a function of both the voltage drop
amount and its duration. If a motor has a large inertia con-
stant, the motor starting process can be long enough to cause
a voltage sag problem. The voltage sag chart that can take into
account both factors is then proposed. The basic idea of the
chart is that a motor starting event should not cause violation
of the ITIC curve. Fig. 3 shows the voltage sag chart developed
for direct motor starting. In this chart, the x-axis is the ratio of
the motor size to the short-circuit level at the PCC
where the voltage sag is assessed for motor starting. The y-axis
is the motor inertia constant . Like the curve in the voltage
drop chart, the curve in the voltage sag chart also indicates a
boundary below which the impact of direct motor starting can
be considered as insignificant in terms of its voltage sag impact,
while above which direct motor starting could cause a problem.
Detailed motor starting analysis is therefore recommended for
the latter case. Some examples are given as follows to illustrate
the use of the voltage sag chart.
1) Case 1: Motor Starting Will Not Cause Power Quality
Concern: In the first example, assume that the ratio of the motor
WANG et al.: PRACTICAL PQ CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT 801

size to the system short-circuit level is 0.032 at the PCC. For

the illustrated system shown in Fig. 1 the motor will be 0.9 MW
(1250 hp) as the system short-circuit level is 28 MVA at the
PCC. The motor has an inertia constant of 1 s. Then a point C
(0.032, 1) can be found in the region without PQ concern in the
chart shown in Fig. 3. As a result, this point (point C) will not
cause a voltage sag problem at the PCC when the ITIC curve is
applied for direct motor starting.
2) Case 2: Motor Starting Will Cause Power Quality Con-
cern: In Fig. 3, point D is related to the point with
0.044 and . This point is above the boundary curve
and a detailed analysis needs to be conducted for this point.
3) Case 3: Terminal Points of the Boundary Curve: The
points at the terminals of the boundary curve (point A and point
B) represent two extreme conditions. For point A, the value of
is 0.022. If is less than 0.022, the ITIC curve
will not be violated no matter what the inertia constant is. On the
other hand, if is greater than 0.052, which is related to
point B, the ITIC curve will always be violated no matter how
small the inertia constant is. Note that motor starting usually
lasts more than 0.5 second for medium and large motors and for
small motors usually one does not need to do a detailed analysis.
The classification of a motor as small, medium and large can be
done based on [21]. Accordingly, an induction motor with 2, 4
or 6 poles is classified as small, medium or large when the nom-
inal power is smaller than 0.75 kW (1 hp); higher than 0.75 kW
and smaller than 370 kW (500 hp); or larger than 370 kW (500
hp), respectively.

C. Use of Voltage Flicker Chart

Fig. 4. Voltage flicker chart for motor starting assessment. (a) P = 0:9 curve.
Another motor starting concern is the voltage flicker. The (b) P = 07: curve.
flicker level caused by motor starting is determined not only by
the voltage drop amount but also by the frequency of occurrence
of starting. Another complication is that the human element is the IEC standard [23], where is required to be less than 0.9
involved when determining the permissible amount of flicker for utility medium voltage (MV) system planning purposes.
voltage. In recent years, the IEC flicker meter has gained wide Fig. 4(b) shows the (MV planning level [23]) curve
acceptance, which should be applied to motor starting assess- for the motor starting cases within the starting frequency less
ment [10]. than once per 10 minutes and more than once per two hours.
In this paper, an approximate formula that connects the IEC The time interval of 2 hours is defined by IEC for calcula-
flicker meter results (i.e., the short-term flicker severity index tions. Similar to the curve, the boundary flicker curve
and the long-term flicker severity index levels) with also indicates whether a detailed flicker analysis should be per-
the frequency of motor starting and the corresponding voltage formed or not.
drop amount at the PCC is used to derive a motor starting flicker Examples of how to use the flicker chart are given as follows.
chart. The flicker chart consists of two curves: the curve and 1) Case 1: Example For the Curve: It is known that the
the curve. The chart shows, for a given voltage drop amount, motor connected to the PCC in Fig. 1 is started 3 times per 10
what is the highest frequency of repetitive motor starting that minutes and that the voltage drop amount at the PCC for
will lead to the violation of the IEC flicker meter limits. each start is 4.8%. The question is if the motor will cause the
Fig. 4(a) shows the flicker curve for motor starting. flicker problem according to the IEC flicker standard. Fig. 4(a)
In this figure, the x-axis is the number of motor starting per 10 displays that the above motor starting event is related to point A
minutes and the y-axis is the voltage drop amount at the PCC which is located inside the region with flicker concern. Thus, the
in per unit . The time interval 10 minutes is exploited flicker problem could be incurred, and a detailed flicker analysis
when expressing the motor starting frequency. This is because is needed for this case. However, if the voltage drop amount
the value of is calculated every 10 minutes by the IEC is decreased to 3.5% for each time (point A’ in Fig. 4(a)), the
flicker meter. From Fig. 4(a) one can see that when the repeti- flicker problem caused by motor starting will not occur.
tive motor starting event is located above the boundary flicker 2) Case 2: Example For the Curve: The objective is to
curve, a flicker problem occurs for this motor starting. The limit assess the motor starting flicker at the PCC with the following
of for the boundary flicker curve is recommended by conditions: and motor starting frequency is
802 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011

is (i.e., cosine of the angle of the motor equivalent

impedance for slip equal to 1), then in the motor base, we have

(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%).

connecting the motor, which is represented as a percentage of

the motor size. A transformer reactance of 5% in the trans-
former base was used and the transformer size is times the
motor size. Fig. 7 reveals that larger transformers will limit the
connecting motor capacity for the same . This result is ex-
pected since the higher the factor is, corresponding to a lower
value of transformer impedance (referred to the motor base),
the higher the inrush current drawn by the motor is. Thus, the
voltage drop through the system impedance is higher. Conse-
quently, the maximum motor size is reduced. The inrush cur-
rent factor was analyzed in Fig. 8, which indicates that the
lower the inrush current factor is, the higher the maximum motor Fig. 10. Motor starting voltage sag mapped to the ITIC curve.
size is. This result is expected since the lower the inrush factor,
the higher the motor impedance, in accordance to (4) and (5).
As a result, the inrush current drawn by the motor is smaller. IV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE VOLTAGE SAG CHART
Therefore, the maximum capacity of the motor can be further Fig. 10 shows the voltage sag boundary of the bottom ITIC
increased. In Fig. 9 the initial motor power factor is ana- curve. On this curve, voltage levels above 80% of the nom-
lyzed. This factor reflects the relationship between and inal are acceptable if their duration is less than 10 seconds,
of the motor equivalent circuit in Fig. 5 for a slip equal to 1. The and voltage levels between 70% and 80% of the nominal are
result displayed in Fig. 9 reveals that the curve will not be con- acceptable if the duration is less than 0.5 second. The curve
siderably changed when the initial motor power factor is small. further reveals that voltage levels above 90% of the nominal
804 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 26, NO. 2, APRIL 2011

are considered as always acceptable. Fig. 10 also plots sev-

eral motor starting events marked as “ ”. As the motor size in-
creases, the voltage drop amount increases and the trace will
cross the 80% threshold. The results also reveal that the motor
starting cases often involve sag durations between 0.5 to 10 sec-
onds or higher. So the region of concern is the 80% threshold
line and the boundary between the 80% and the 90% threshold
lines.
Now let’s consider the barely acceptable motor starting cases
that result in 20% voltage drop. If the motor inertia constant
increases without causing voltage drop change, the sag event
points will move rightward as it takes more time to start the
motor. Point corresponds to the largest inertia constant that
can be accepted without violating the ITIC curve. The voltage
sag impact chart shows this largest acceptable inertia constant
as a function of the motor and system sizes while the 20% Fig. 11. Motor starting H 0S curve for S = 10 MVA.
voltage drop amount is not violated. With the above background
introduction, the development of the voltage sag chart can be
described as follows. First, we know that for a given system
short-circuit level at the PCC, we can use (8) to calculate
the voltage drop amount of the PCC caused by motor
starting

(8)

where is the function defined in (7). Equations (8) shows that

each motor size is related to a value of if is
known. Since, from the previous explanation, we have

(9)

thus, we can get a motor size range from (8).

is the motor size causing and is the motor
size causing . Fig. 12. Impact of inertia constant on motor starting time.
Then, for each motor size within the range ,a
boundary motor inertia constant can be calculated from the
following equations by setting as 10 seconds: boundary value for , and is the boundary value for
. A boundary curve shown in Fig. 11 can then be plotted
for with a given value. When the system
(10) short-circuit level is changed, different curves can
be plotted. However, further study shows that these curves can
be unified if the x-axis in Fig. 11 is expressed as the ratio of
where is the motor starting time or the voltage sag duration,
. Then, a generalized curve like the one shown in Fig. 3
is the electromagnetic torque, is the mechanical torque of
can be drawn for motor starting voltage sag assessment.
the load, is the electric rotor speed, and is its steady-state
The largest motor starting time of 10 seconds is used to get
value. The torques are expressed in the per unit system with the
the boundary value. The meaning of this boundary value
motor size as the base system capacity. The mechanical torque
is that if a motor has inertia constant larger than the boundary
usually has the following form:
value when and are known, the motor starting time
will be over 10 seconds. This duration will result in the motor
(11) starting event being located in the No Damage Region of the
ITIC curve. The voltage sag problem will then occur. In Fig. 12,
where is the coefficient for the load torque which points C, D, E cause the same voltage sag magnitude 0.85 pu
changes with the rotor speed during the motor starting process because they have the same values of and
and reaches the rated motor torque at steady state [22]. is . However, they have different values. Point D is related
determined by . From (10), we know that the motor starting to the boundary value. The inertia constant value at point C is
time is proportional to once the motor size is decided. smaller than the boundary value, thus, it is in the safe region.
Based on (11), a motor inertia constant range can Point E has an inertia constant value larger than the boundary
be obtained for the motor size range . is the value, consequently, point E is not allowed for motor starting.
WANG et al.: PRACTICAL PQ CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT 805

V. DEVELOPMENT OF THE VOLTAGE FLICKER CHART

Motor starting can occur once per hour as well as several
times per week. is calculated every 10 minutes. As a re-
sult, IEC has suggested an analytical method in which a “shape
factor ” is defined for motor starting voltage characteristics
[23]. With the shape factor definition, the motor starting flicker
can be calculated by using the following procedure. The an-
alytical calculation equation recommended by IEC is shown
in (12)

(12)

where is the sum of the flicker impression times. If we

assume that the motor starting voltage drop amount is the same
for all the motor starts, the total flicker impression time can be
expressed as follows:

(13)

where is the time of motor starting within the assessment time

period . is calculated as follows [23]:

(14)

where is the maximum relative voltage change (the voltage

drop amount) which is expressed as a percentage of the nom-
inal voltage. Equation (14) is defined by IEC. For motor starting
without special mitigation methods for inrush current reduc-
tion, the shape factor is normally about 1, as recommended in
[23]. From (12)–(14) the relationship between the motor starting
times and the voltage drop amount can be obtained Fig. 13. Simulation verification of the voltage drop chart. (a) Voltage drop chart
( = 3;  = 6:8; = 6%; k = 5:5; cos ' = 0:3). (b) Motor starting
by simulation waveforms.

(15)
In the IEC standards, should be smaller than the planning
level 0.9 in MV system and the evaluation time for is 10
min. With these two conditions, the boundary flicker curve with
, shown in Fig. 4(a), can be plotted based on (15).
Similarly, the value of can also be calculated by using (12)
by replacing the evaluation time segment with 2 hours
(16)
VI. VALIDATION RESULTS
The section presents the EMT simulation results executed in
PSCAD/EMTDC to verify the accuracy and limitations of the
proposed power quality charts for motor starting. The real case
shown in Fig. 1 is employed to run the simulation. The field data
of the distribution system are listed in Table I of Appendix A
and the selected motor data [24] are shown in Table II of Ap-
pendix C. The comparisons are summarized as follows.
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%).

cases are simulated respectively and the simulation results are

displayed in Fig. 13(b). In the simulations, the motor starting
instant is 1 s and the 25 kV/4.16 kV transformer capacity
is changed to maintain 6.8 for the different cases. The
distribution system line impedances are also changed when
is increased from 28 MVA to 56 MVA; however, is always
kept as 3 in order to assure the same conditions in Fig. 13(a)
and (b). Fig. 13(b) reveals that the PCC voltage for Case 1 and
Case 2 is below 0.95 pu during the motor starting, whereas it
is above 0.95 pu for Case 3 and Case 4. Thus, the voltage drop
chart has successfully predicted the motor starting impact of
the illustrated cases.
In order to further validate the voltage drop chart, Fig. 14
Fig. 15. Simulation verification of the voltage sag chart. (a) Voltage sag chart
( = 3;  = 6:8;
= 6%; k = 5:5; cos ' = 0:3). (b) Motor starting
shows the curve behavior for a variation of . In this figure, the
curves determined by the proposed formulas are compared to simulation waveforms.
the curves obtained by repetitive EMT simulations done with
PSCAD/EMTDC. As one can see the results obtained with the
proposed method are very accurate. Similar results are also ob- Step 7) Run a direct motor starting simulation by using
tained for the other sensitivity analysis presented in Part B of PSCAD/EMTDC
Section III. In the EMT simulations, the induction motor is rep- • If
resented by the traditional squirrel cage model, the transformer Do
by the T-model and the equivalent system by a voltage source Go to Step 6
behind an impedance. The algorithm used to trace the curve by • If
repetitive EMT simulations is as follows: Store the points
Step 1) Set , , and ; Do
Step 2) Set (step of motor capability) and (step Go to Step 4.
of system short-circuit level);
Step 3) Do short-circuit level under anal-
B. Simulation Results for the Voltage Sag Chart
ysis;
Step 4) If short-circuit level under analysis Fig. 15(a) shows the voltage sag chart based on the parame-
plot the points ters set in Fig. 13(a). Point C and point D in Fig. 15(a) are all
end; related to Case 1 in Part A of Section VI. The only difference
Step 5) Do motor capability under anal- between the two points is that for point C and
ysis; for point D. From Fig. 15(a) one can see that point C is in the
Step 6) Set: region without PQ concern and point D is in the region with PQ
and using (1) and (2) (system parameters) concern. This observation can be validated by the EMT simu-
using (3) (transformer parameter) lation results shown in Fig. 15(b) where the motor starting time
and using (4) and (5) is 3.2 s for and is 14 s for . The voltage
, and drop amount is the same (around 17%) for the two points. Ac-
(motor parameters); cording to the ITIC curve displayed in Fig. 10, the case
WANG et al.: PRACTICAL PQ CHARTS FOR MOTOR STARTING ASSESSMENT
Fig. 16. Simulation verification of the voltage flicker chart. (a) Motor starting
waveform. (b) Comparison of P (T = 100 ms; T = 100 ms; F = 0:8).
is in the No Interruption in Function Region (without PQ con-
cern) and the case is in the No Damage Region (with
PQ concern). As a result, the conclusions from Fig. 15(a) are
confirmed in Fig. 15(b). It is worth noting that the range and
the boundary values (point A and point B) in Fig. 15(a) are dif-
ferent from those in Fig. 3 due to the change of the parameters
, , , , and . engineers when analyzing the installation of a new induction
C. Simulation Results for the Voltage Flicker Chart
From Section V, we know that the proposed voltage flicker
chart was developed based on (12)–(17); consequently, the
accuracy of (12)–(17) determines the validation of the proposed
voltage flicker chart. In this section, the analytical motor starting
flicker assessment method is verified by using a digital IEC
flicker meter set up in Matlab/Simulink. Fig. 16(a) shows the
motor starting waveform adopted by the analytical assessment
method. Three main parameters, which are , (front time),
and (tail time), are used to determine the shape factor of the
waveform [25]. Fig. 16(b) shows the comparison result of the
values obtained from the analytical method and the simulation
method when is varied. In the analytical method,
is determined by and according
to Fig. 7 of [25]. A digital IEC flicker meter [19] is designed in
Matlab/Simulink to run measure the of the motor starting
waveform shown in Fig. 16(a). The motor starting frequency is
once per minute. From Fig. 16(b) one can see the analytical
result and the simulation result match well.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
Induction motor starting draws high inrush current from
the system, which may result in an unacceptable voltage drop
807
TABLE I
DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM PARAMETERS
at the PCC. The analysis of this problem usually is done by
using electromagnetic transient simulations, which is a very
time-consuming process and requires elaborated data. Thus,
three power quality charts were proposed in this paper to
provide practical guidelines for motor starting assessment. The
developed charts can be used to fast determine if a motor is
permitted to be connected to the PCC based on the voltage drop
amount criterion defined by the utilities as well as the ITIC
curve and the IEC flicker standard. The proposed three charts,
i.e., the voltage drop, the voltage sag and the flicker charts, were
applied to several real cases and no case related to power quality
issues was classified as power quality free. Due to the lack
of space, these cases were not included in the paper; instead,
we have decided to include only simple examples in order
to facilitate the understanding of the proposed method. The
results of these several cases showed that the proposed charts
can be applied with confidence to separate the cases where the
power quality is not a concern, not demanding further analysis,
from the cases where the power quality may be a concern and
more detailed investigation must be conducted. Therefore, the
usage of these charts can significantly reduce the time spent by
motor. The examples illustrated that the application of the
guideline charts is straightforward and based on them one
can know how the results may be interpreted. The sensitivity
studies presented in Section III-B also showed which are the
main factors affecting the impact of the motor starting process
on the power quality issues. The analyzed factors were: feeder
ratio, transformer size, inrush current factor and the initial
motor power factor. The accuracy of the proposed charts was
also verified by motor starting simulations in PSCAD/EMTDC
and the IEC flicker meter in Matlab/Simulink.
APPENDIX A
Table I lists the parameters of the distribution system shown
in Fig. 1.
APPENDIX B
This section presents the development procedure of the
voltage drop amount equation shown in Section III. From Fig. 5
the voltage at the PCC can be derived as
(18)
808
TABLE II
THREE-PHASE MOTOR PARAMETERS (4.16 kV)
The equivalent system parameters can be calculated by
(19)
(20)
Substituting and in (18) results in the following equation:
(21)
There are two solutions for the above equation. One is expressed
by (7) and the other is (22). However, (22) will get a negative
value because , , and . Thus, only (7) is
considered in the analysis
(22)
APPENDIX C
Table II lists the motor parameters used in the simulations.
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Xiaoyu Wang (M’08) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engi-
neering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000 and 2003, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2008.
Currently, he is an Assistant Researcher at Tsinghua University. His research
interests include distributed generation and power quality.
Jing Yong (M’08) received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, in 1985, 1988, and
2007, respectively.
She has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta since 2008.
Her current interest is power quality.
Wilsun Xu (M’90–SM’95–F’05) received the Ph.D. degree from the University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 1989.
He was an Engineer with BC Hydro from 1990 to 1996. Currently, he is a
Professor and an NSERC/iCORE Industrial Research Chair at the University of
Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. His research interests are power quality and
harmonics.
Walmir Freitas (M’02) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
the University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil, in 2001.
From 2002 to 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Al-
berta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. Currently, he is an Associate Professor with the
University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil. His research interests are the anal-
ysis of distribution systems and distributed generation.