Experimental analysis of the electrical losses under nonsinusoidal conditions: Is the Fourier series really applicable?

Abstract

    The objective of this paper is to evaluate experimentally the increase of electrical losses under nonsinusoidal situations. Such evaluation is done by calculating the energy dissipated in a resistor based on temperature measurement. In order to obtain a practical result, two kinds of tests are performed: one measuring the heating caused by a distorted wave of current and another for each harmonic component of the same distorted wave. The energy dissipated in the first situation is compared with the sum of the energy dissipated for each harmonic component.