Currents Physical Components (CPC) in Circuits with Nonsinusoidal Voltages and Currents. Part 2: Three-Phase Three-Wire Linear Circuits

This paper summarizes the present state of discussions on power phenomena, power definitions and compensation in three-phase three-wire linear circuits with nonsinusoidal voltages and currents. In particular, definitions of the arithmetic and geometric apparent powers are discussed. It is shown that these two powers result in an erroneous value of power factor of unbalanced loads even if voltages and currents are sinusoidal. A reasoning that leads to a right selection of the apparent power definition is presented as well. The paper also presents the con-cept of the three-phase current decomposition into Currents' Physical Components (CPC) and its application for power definitions and compensation in three-phase circuits.