Prof. Christian Laurano and Prof. Sergio Toscani of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano have received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Workshop on Applied Measurement for Power Systems (AMPS) for a paper co-authored with the University of Cagliari and RSE – Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico.
The award-winning paper, titled “Harmonic State Estimation: Multifrequency Approach for Exploiting Correlation in Line Parameters Uncertainty”, addresses the harmonic state estimation of electrical distribution networks.
The growing deployment of distributed energy resources, the electrification of transport and heating, and the increasingly widespread use of power electronic converters are profoundly transforming distribution networks. This evolution is leading to higher levels of harmonic distortion – components superimposed on the network’s fundamental frequency – which can affect power quality and system reliability.
To monitor these phenomena effectively, it is no longer sufficient to estimate the network state only at the fundamental frequency: harmonic components must also be considered. For the first time, the paper proposes an integrated harmonic state-estimation approach that jointly considers uncertainties in both measurements and network parameters, while also modelling correlations among the different frequency components.
The results show that this method significantly improves estimation accuracy compared with conventional approaches, paving the way for its integration into modern electrical-network monitoring systems.