Characterization of the leakage currents produced by household electronic devices

Abstract

The leakage currents produced by typical household devices are investigated. Accurate measurements of 18 single devices and 16 mixes of devices were made using a high accurate laboratory setup. The influences of the voltage distortion, voltage magnitude and frequency dependent network impedances are also addressed. The results showed that the leakage current produced by new devices, like electric vehicles and photovoltaic inverters, is higher than the leakage current produced by traditional household appliances. The network impedance and the voltage distortion have a considerable effect on the resulting leakage currents, especially voltage distortions with supraharmonic components seem to produce an additional increase of the leakage currents.