Noise insensitive optimal harmonic estimator design with lightning search algorithm

Abstract

Electrical harmonics directly affect the power quality of electrical systems. In order to improve power quality of electrical systems, accurate estimation of electrical harmonics is crucial and essential. This paper presents a novel estimator design approach for harmonic estimation problems. The proposed harmonic estimator is based on lightning search algorithm (LSA) that is a powerful metaheuristic optimization method inspired of natural phenomenon of lightning. The performance of designed estimator has been comprehensively analyzed by considering time varying power signals that contain two well-known estimation problems in the literature. In addition, each of these problems are examined for three different levels of noise. Furthermore, performance of the designed estimator is compared with the previously reported estimators. The achieved estimation results for different case studies clearly indicated that the proposed LSA based harmonic estimator provides better estimation results in all experiments than that of our previous method based on modified artificial bee colony (MABC) optimization and other existing methods available in the literature.