Calculating current on a 3-ph feeder

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ike5547

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Chico, CA
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Electrician
This is not homework. I was debating another electrician on a related question when I realized I didn't know how to do this. Now it's driving me nuts. I gotta know. Please. I've been wracking my brains out on it.

Assume you have (3 ) single phase line to line loads connected across the three legs of a feeder.

AB) 5.8 amps
AC) 6.3 amps
BC) 6.5 amps

Calculate the current on each of the legs of the feeder.

ETA: I've determined through measurements and what I already know that the currents are not simply additive onto the feeder.
 
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They do combine together at the connection point vectorially. You need to include the angles.

If we’re assuming all resistive loads, and you’re looking for just magnitude, I’d start by writing each load current out with the associated angle. Just picking a stake in the ground AB is 0, BC is -120, and CA is
120.
 
The short answer is that you need to determine the phase angle of your currents and then use vector addition to find the sum. The reason that the values are not simply additive is that they are not in phase.

Consider the example of a 120/240V single phase MWBC with AN of 10A and A'N of 8A; the current on the neutral is only 2A. In the 3 phase case that you are considering the phase difference is only 60 degrees (assuming all loads have the same power factor) so the 'phase difference cancellation effect' is much smaller, but it is still there.

The long answer is quite lecture.

You have a bunch of assumptions hidden in your question. For example, you give a single value for each of the single phase load currents. But this is an _AC_ circuit; the current is constantly changing. So when you give a single number what you are doing is representing this constantly changing value with some sort of average, in particular the RMS average.

The _instantaneous_ current at any point always combines by simple addition, at least neglecting any effects associated with RF emission. So all the formulas that you come across will be various ways of approximating doing the instantaneous sums and then calculating the RMS of the result.

For example, if you assume that all of the currents are pure 60Hz sine waves, then it turns out you can represent each current by a vector, an arrow where the length is proportional to the RMS value and the direction represents the phase angle. Vector addition is visually simply putting these arrows in line head of one to the tail of the next. The resulting 'sum' vector represents the RMS of the currents added together. This only works for sine waves all of the same frequency.

Back to your original question, if you _assume_ that all of your loads are linear and that the phase angle of the currents is set by the phase angle of the voltage, you can very quickly get your answer. But depending on how accurate you need to be, these assumptions might not hold.

The first basic assumption to check is the phase angle, which might be described by the 'displacement power factor'. If your AB load is a resistive heater, and your AC load is a motor, then the phase angles will be different from what you expect and the sum current different.

The next basic assumption to check is 'pure sine wave'. If your loads are not linear, the current will be distorted and not a sine wave, in which case the vector addition technique does not work. However it can be saved by doing 'harmonic analysis' and then using a separate vector calculation for each harmonic.

In general you don't have to worry about the 'same frequency' issue for power distribution (except for harmonics) since it is very uncommon for different branches of a feeder to operate at different frequencies :)

-Jon
The vector addition trick only works for pure sine waves of the same frequency.


Once your currents don't have a nice sine form, you can't use simple vector addition to add them up. But before you
 
Once your currents don't have a nice sine form, you can't use simple vector addition to add them up. But before you

Thank you. Assuming the loads are all resistive, an online triangle calculator will do it for me. I'm not an engineer and my math skills aren't very advanced. I was hoping for something down and dirty that didn't involve plotting vectors. Assuming a sinusoidal wave form. Like this formula for neutral current:

√ A²+B²+C² - AB+BC+AC

I guess that's not possible and I'm satisfied with that answer.
 
If you simplify your assumptions enough it is possible.

if you assume pure sine waves and a 60 degree phase difference (AB is 60 degrees off from AC) then the formula is

√ (AB)² + (AC)² + (AB)*(AC)

-Jon
 
Thank you so much, Jon. That's exactly what I was looking for. That would make an excellent addition to the following page on this site. Though it would be difficult to describe its use in a short sentence.

 
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