Performance of a Voltage Peak Detection-Based Flickermeter

Voltage fluctuations and rapid voltage changes lead to lamps flickering and disturbance of visual perception may occur consequently. For evaluation of the flicker severity level by means of voltage measurement there was developed an instrument called flickermeter, which is based on a reference incandescent bulb human eye brain of average observer chain response modeling. The signal processing technique implemented in a standard flickermeter, standardized by international standard bodies, simulates fundamental behavior of the reference incandescent bulb which is sensitive mainly to low-frequency amplitude modulation of the voltage. The voltage magnitude fluctuation could be introduced also by subharmonic and/or interharmonic components superimposed on a voltage waveform. In frequency domain, the boundary interharmonic frequency of a amplitude voltage modulation is approx. double of the fundamental system frequency (f(1)) and the response of the standard flickermeter to the interharmonic voltages is also up to frequency of 2*f(1). However high-frequency voltage interharmonics at frequencies over 2*f(1) beating with voltage fundamental waveform are likewise able to produce the disturbing light flicker. It applies to all types of lamps, except the incandescent one and the instrument is expected to properly work and measure also the effects of these interharmonics. The paper presents a new type of flickermeter utilizing proposed signal processing approach to high-frequency interharmonic voltage flicker detection which is based on voltage peak detection. Realization of the new flickermeter type in Matlab Simulink is discussed and its characteristics in terms of numerical simulations are shown.