A new distributed measurement index for the identification of harmonic distortion and/or unbalance sources based on the IEEE Std. 1459 framework

•Validation of a new distributed measurement index for identification of harmonic distortion and/or unbalance sources.•Studies of distorted and/or unbalanced systems with capacitor banks.•Identification of capacitive loads as linear loads.•Experimental realizations and comparative of distributed measurement indices. The number and power of time-varying nonlinear loads connected to the electricity network has increased progressively in recent years, resulting in voltage and current disturbances. In the current, deregulated electricity market, with the proliferating presence of Distributed Generation (DG), it is becoming increasingly important to identify the source of such power quality disturbances. This paper presents a new index based on distributed measurements that allows us to identify the location of sources of harmonic distortion and/or unbalance in distribution networks. The novelty of the proposal lies in the use of terms taken from a different decomposition of apparent power for harmonic distortion and unbalance in power systems under IEEE Std. 1459. From these new terms, a series of indicators have been defined that facilitate the evaluation of the harmonic distortion and voltage unbalance of each user with respect to the electric power supply. The proposed index is validated by means of an experimental platform in which different working conditions have been developed, including load with capacitor banks for power factor compensation.