robbietan
Senior Member
- Location
- Antipolo City
Consider a line-neutral load which only conducts during the peak middle third of the AC half-cycle. Now consider a balanced wye array of such loads. When the loads on phase A are conducting, the loads on phases B and C are not conducting, thus all the A current must return on the neutral. Similarly for B and C. With this _extreme_ type of loading, the neutral current could equal the sum of the phase currents.
The real world experience reported here suggests that such an extreme case is very unlikely.
Going back to the original post, it seems that many (most??) T-8 electronic ballasts are now designed to give high power factor and low harmonic distortion. A quick looks shows that common values are <10% THD, though the numbers can be as high as 25%.
Lamps with magnetic ballasts have much higher THD; so if you are replacing old magnetic ballast HIDs with modern electronic ballast T-8 systems, I would expect harmonic currents to go down considerably.
-Jon
and the utilities here do not permit certain ballasts as they have current THD of plus 20%, their current THD limit for small loads