Impacts of reactive power and harmonics on LV network losses

Reactive power and harmonics have been proposed as key factors contributing to losses on LV networks. This paper describes measurements of reactive power phase displacement and harmonic distortion over a large number of LV feeders, demonstrating that low power factors mostly arise when the demand is lowest. Loss calculations for a set of eleven feeders show that distortion has a low impact, less than 10% of the loss power and near zero for feeders with higher losses. Phase displacement can significantly increase losses, particularly for commercial LV feeders. In one example, power factor correction would reduce losses by up to 36%.