IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO.
4, OCTOBER 2010
Parameter Identification of Arc Furnace Based on
Stochastic Nature of Arc Length Using Two-Step
Optimization Technique
S. M. Mousavi Agah, Member, IEEE, S. H. Hosseinian, H. Askarian Abyaneh, Senior Member, IEEE, and
N. Moaddabi
Abstract—Recent studies on the effect of arc furnaces in a power
system lack accurate predicting voltage waveform of an arc fur-
nace. This is mainly due to the random nature of the arc length. In
this paper, a novel two-step optimization technique is presented to
identify the arc furnace parameters considering the stochastic na-
ture of the arc length. The proposed method is based on a genetic
algorithm (GA) which adopts the arc current and voltage wave-
forms to estimate parameters of the nonlinear time-varying model
of an electric arc furnace. Simulation results are compared with
data obtained from two real arc furnace plants. Analyses show that
the proposed method is profitable to identify accurate values of the
arc furnace parameters which incorporate the stochastic nature of
the arc length.
Index Terms—Arc furnace, genetic algorithm (GA), nonlinear
time-varying arc model, parameter estimation, power quality
(PQ).
I. INTRODUCTION
A RC FURNACES used for refining and melting metals
in the steel production procedure are some of the main
causes of power-quality (PQ) problems in electric power sys-
tems. As the popularity of the arc furnaces increases, PQ prob-
lems will be more severe [1]. In order to take precautions to
minimize the adverse effects of arc furnaces, it is necessary to
develop an accurate and easy-to-use electric arc model. How-
ever, this has so far been quite a challenging task. The reason
was the complexity of the electric arc physical phenomena and
the randomness associated with the melting stage of arc furnace
operation [2].
In [3] and [4], a nonlinear resistance model has been pro-
posed which uses numerical analysis to solve differential equa-
tions describing the arc furnace. However, this model does not
consider the time-varying nature of the arc. A time-varying re-
sistance model has been recently presented in [5] which relates
the reference resistance of the arc to power consumed by it. The
actual arc resistance can have sinusoidal or bandlimited white
noise variation around the reference value [6].
Manuscript received July 26, 2009; revised November 24, 2009. First pub-
lished July 12, 2010; current version published September 22, 2010. Paper no.
TPWRD-00562-2009.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir
University of Technology, Tehran 15914, Iran (e-mail: s.m.mousavi@aut.ac.ir;
Hosseinian@aut.ac.ir; askarian@aut.ac.ir; nimamoaddabi@yahoo.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2010.2044812
0885-8977/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
2859
Cox and Mirbod in [7] have used a current-source model for
arc. The source current has been represented by the Fourier se-
ries where the Fourier coefficients change randomly in each pe-
riod. It takes into account the stochastic behavior of the arc fur-
nace in a correct way. However, it is more suited to design filter
components [8].
An alternative method to model the arc furnace is based on
chaos theory [9]. The method has become a modeling issue, sub-
sequent to recognize the chaotic responses in electric arc fur-
naces [10]. A model based on chaotic dynamics is introduced
in [11]. The main disadvantage of the model is that it does not
generally have an accepted precise mathematical definition [2].
Furthermore, it exhibits extreme sensitivity in the state trajec-
tory with respect to the initial conditions [12].
A frequency-domain analysis method has been proposed in
[13] which represents the arc voltage and current by their har-
monic components. In this model, it is assumed that the arc fur-
nace draws the maximum power in the fundamental frequency,
which is not always true [2]. The model is simple. However, it
cannot represent the stochastic nature of the arc [14].
In [2] and [15], a power balance method is proposed. The
model is based on the energy balance equation, which is a non-
linear differential equation of the arc radius and the arc current.
Since this method is based on the experimental formula, which
varies in different furnaces, any change in load requires the ap-
plication of different models in the simulation process [8].
A voltage-source model is used in [16], where voltage is con-
sidered as square waves with modulated amplitude. The new
amplitude of voltage is generated after every zero crossing of
the arc current during the reinitiating process [8]. In [17], a non-
linear time-varying voltage-source model has been presented. In
this model, the arc voltage is defined as a nonlinear function of
the arc length. The time variation of the arc length is modeled
by using deterministic or stochastic laws. The deterministic law
usually assumes a sinusoidal behavior for the arc length.
Among the literature reviewed, it can be seen that
time-varying resistance and voltage models not only are
able to perfectly simulate the stochastic nature of the arc length,
but they also have some advantages to the other methods
mentioned before. The advantages are reported in [17].
Several papers have been published which aim to identify
parameters of the arc furnaces. A power balance method was
adopted in [1], together with differential evolution algorithm, to
estimate the arc furnace parameters. However, the main disad-
vantage of the proposed method in [1] is that the time variation
2860
Fig. 1. Typical circuit diagram of an electric plant supplying an arc furnace
implemented in PSCAD/EMTDC.
of the arc length was not addressed. A procedure is presented
in [18] for measurements of voltage flicker using genetic algo-
rithm (GA). However, it represents the arc-length behavior in a
deterministic manner which is different from real experiments.
Despite the importance of stochastic representation of electric
arc length to achieve real and accurate model in PQ studies,
less attention has been paid to it in the literature. Therefore,
it remains unclear how the stochastic nature of arc length can
be addressed in the parameter identification of the arc furnace.
Hence, the additional study of this phenomenon is needed.
This paper tries to fill this gap by proposing a novel two-step
optimization technique. The proposed method is capable of in-
corporating the stochastic nature of arc length in the parameter
identification procedure of an electric arc furnace. The arc is
described by a voltage-source model. The arc furnace model
is simulated by PSCAD/EMTDC. The GA-based two-step op-
timization procedure is implemented by using MATLAB. The
method is applied by using data adopted from [17] which are
attributed to a real arc furnace plant installed in Northern Italy.
The proposed method is also validated by making a comparison
between the simulation results and the measurements conducted
on a real arc furnace plant in Tabriz, Iran. Analyses show that the
proposed method is profitable to achieve precise estimation of
the parameters describing the stochastic nature of the arc. This
paper is organized as follows.: Section II presents a brief review
of the nonlinear time-varying arc model. Section III denotes the
objective function, proposed method, as well as the GA appli-
cation to the problem. Simulation results are presented in Sec-
tion IV and finally conclusions are given in Section V.
II. NONLINEAR TIME-VARYING ARC FURNACE MODEL
A typical circuit diagram of an electric plant supplying an arc
furnace is shown in Fig. 1. The figure is presented before in [8],
[17], and [19]. Parameters of the studied system shown in Fig. 1
are presented in the Appendix. The nonlinear model of the arc
furnace can be described with a voltage–current characteristic
as follows:
(1)
where and are the arc voltage and the arc current, respec-
tively.
is the arc length,
is the threshold value to which voltage tends when cur-
rent increases.
and are two constants whose values are considered to
be dependent on the derivative of the current and are different
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010
Fig. 2. Dynamic arc furnace voltage-current characteristic obtained by the pro-
posed arc model in [17], implemented by PSCAD/EMTDC.
TABLE I
DYNAMIC ARC FURNACE MODEL PARAMETER
VALUES IN (1) USED FOR SIMULATION
in increasing ( and ) and decreasing ( and ) parts of
current in the V-I characteristic.
Fig. 2 shows the voltage-current characteristic, which is ob-
tained from (1). The parameters proposed in [17], [19], and [20]
were used to plot the figure. The data are presented in Table I.
Due to the intrinsic nonlinearity of the arc characteristic, the
arc length variation, which is the cause of flicker, is unavoid-
able. Considering these variations, it is possible by the following
equation:
(2)
where represents a constant that accounts for the voltage drop
in the anode and cathode electrodes of the furnace, and is the
per-unit length voltage across the arc.
The rapid variation of the arc current during the melting
process is highly correlated with the arc-length variations [17].
Therefore, the accurate representation of the arc-length varia-
tion is difficult to achieve [19]. The complicated nature of the
phenomenon has led to different deterministic [20], [21] and
stochastic [22] approaches to study the arc-length variation.
The deterministic approach is based on a sinusoidal repre-
sentation of the arc-length variation, with the frequency being
chosen in the range typical of flicker (0.5–25 Hz). Despite the
reasons reported in [17] on the suitability of the approach in
computer simulations, it does not clearly represent a normal
working condition of the arc furnace.
The stochastic approach is supported by the observation that
the arc-length time variation can be considered as a random phe-
nomenon [22]. As mentioned in [19] for more realistic calcula-
tions, the stochastic model will be more precise. Therefore, in
this paper, the arc length is considered to vary stochastically.
Using this method, the time variation of the arc length is given
by
(3)
MOUSAVI AGAH et al.: PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF ARC FURNACE BASED ON STOCHASTIC NATURE OF ARC LENGTH
where is the reference arc length and is the white noise
signal with a frequency range, in which voltage fluctuations pro-
duce flicker (5 to 20 Hz). Its amplitude varies up to the max-
imum arc-length deviation [17], [19], [20].
III. PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARC FURNACE
A. Objective Function
The subsection describes the objective function which is used
to estimate the parameters of the nonlinear time-varying arc fur-
nace model introduced in Section II. The main purpose of the
procedure is to identify the set of arc furnace parameters be-
longing to the solution space that minimize the global error
between the measured and the estimated voltage
samples.
In particular, the overall problem can be regarded as an un-
constraint minimization of the estimation error as follows:
(4)
Two different objective functions (OFs) have been used in a
similar optimization process in the literature [18]. According to
the previous works [2], [18], one of them has been reported to
be more appropriate than the other for this purpose. Here, this
OF is used, which calculates the mean value for the rooted sum
of squared errors, as follows:
(5)
where and are the estimated and the measured value
of the arc furnace voltage related to the th arc current sample,
respectively. is the number of samples per half cycle.
It is noted that a similar OF was used in [18]. However, the
proposed algorithm in [18] did not consider the stochastic nature
of the arc length. The following subsection describes how this
important criterion is incorporated in arc furnace modeling.
B. Arc Furnace Modeling
The arc furnace model is developed in the power system sim-
ulation tool, PSCAD/EMTDC, by using the PSCAD component
builder. Internal to the component, FORTRAN code is written
to simulate the arc furnace as a voltage-dependent source, base
on the model described in Section II. The stochastic nature of
arc length is incorporated into the model by generating a white
noise signal representing arc-length deviations. The idea is sup-
ported by findings reported in [13]and [17]. The white noise
signal is created by using a random number generator having
a uniform distribution over the interval . is refer-
ence arc length and is maximum arc-length deviation. The
output of the random number generator is fed to a band-pass
filter with lower and uppercut frequencies 4 Hz and 14 Hz, re-
spectively (according to the frequency range reported in [20]).
Fig. 3 depicts the stochastic variation of arc length that is simu-
lated with a reference arc length of 30 cm and maximum devia-
tion of 10 cm. As can be seen from Fig. 3, the arc length varies
2861
Fig. 3. Stochastic nature of arc-length implementation using the band-pass
white noise signal.
every 10 ms. This duration of time is chosen because of the fact
that although the arc length has a random value, its value will
not change at least for a half cycle, as mentioned in the literature
[13], [17].
The following proposed method, which is capable of identi-
fying arc furnace parameters, is presented.
C. Proposed Method
The main objective of this paper is to identify electric arc
furnace parameters. Among the parameters introduced in the
previous section, , and are deterministic variables;
however, has a stochastic nature. The value of arc length
varies in subsequent half cycles and its variation is described
by a uniformly distributed random variable in the range which
is defined by the reference arc length , and maximum arc-
length deviation .
Different optimization algorithms can be used to solve the
aforementioned parameter identification problem. However, the
number of iterations in most of these algorithms is limited. Due
to this and many other reasons (such as the heuristic nature of
modern optimization techniques and probability of trapping into
the local optimum), implementing these techniques for various
half cycles may lead to obtaining different values for the model
parameters. However, as mentioned previously, among the pa-
rameters, only has a stochastic nature (its value can be different
in various half cycles), and all of the other deterministic param-
eters should have a unique value in all of the half cycles of the
observation window.
The previously mentioned shortcomings in the existing opti-
mization algorithms were the main motivation for the authors
to propose a two-step optimization technique. The proposed
method divides the observation window into several half cycles,
each having the same duration of 10 ms. Then, the parameter
identification procedure is performed based on the data coming
from the measured voltage waveform in each period of 10 ms,
separately. It does not mean that the procedure should be com-
pleted during 10 ms. Rather, the procedure may take some sec-
onds to complete parameter identification in each half cycle. It
may also take several minutes for the whole half cycles of the
observation window. However, these are not constraining prob-
lems since the proposed method is based on offline calculations.
The steps of the proposed method are described as follows:
Step 1) First, an observation window is considered on the
arc furnace voltage waveform available from direct
2862 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010

measurement. The observation window consists of

several consecutive half cycles. Then, the optimiza-
tion procedure is performed by using the previously
mentioned OF, in consecutive half cycles separately.
The output of the performed optimization proce-
dure in each half cycle is a set of estimated arc fur-
nace parameters. The average of all the estimated
parameters over various half cycles of the observa-
tion window is assumed to be the identified value for
the deterministic variables (i.e., , and . In
this manner, a unique value is obtained for the deter-
ministic variables, as it is coherent to the nature of
these parameters.
Step 2) The optimization procedure is performed again
in each half cycle, using the voltage waveform
obtained from direct measurement and the deter-
ministic parameters of arc furnace identified from
the previous step, as its inputs. The output of the
optimization procedure is an identified value for
the arc length over consecutive half cycles. Based
on the identified arc lengths in various half cycles,
the reference value and the maximum deviation of
the arc length are determined along the observation
window.
For the mentioned optimization problem, GA seems to be par-
ticularly suitable. Compared with the conventional optimization
methods, such as calculus-based and enumerative strategies, GA
is robust, global, and may be generally applied without recourse
to domain-specific heuristics. Fig. 4. GA application flowchart to the proposed method.

D. GA Application to the Problem

This section is devoted to review the notation and concept of
GA to give a better understanding and coherency of this paper.
Fig. 4 shows an overall view of the step-by-step process to im-
plement a real-code GA to the problem. In this figure, steps of
GA optimization are shown as a group using dashed lines. This
is also applied for the arc furnace model. These two groups are
shown again in the same figure with no more details for sim-
plicity.
The goal of GA is to optimize the proposed OF on search
space. The search space consists of predefined intervals for
values of arc furnace parameters.
GA is started by creating the first “Parent” chromosome
pool. The pool contains several sets of arc furnace parame-
ters which are created randomly. Each set of parameters is
packed into a chromosome which is the key variable in GA.
Each chromosome consists of the arc furnace parameters (i.e.,
). The number of arc furnace parameter
sets (chromosomes) is referred to as the population size. To
evaluate goodness of each parameter set in the population
regarding the accuracy of estimated parameters, the previously
described OF value is calculated. Based on the calculated OF
values, those parents who have more optimal (minimum) OF
values are granted more opportunities to survive (i.e., they
can generate more “children”). Thus, the new arc furnace pa-
rameters (i.e., ) are generated by using
the operators of crossover and mutation, and are packed into
“children” chromosomes. The evaluation of each new offspring
satisfaction is required in order to form the “Children” chro-
mosome pool. The described procedure is then repeated until
the stop criterion is reached. In this paper, simple criterion is
used which is met when the maximum number of generations
is reached.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
To check the validity of the proposed method, the results of
simulations, which are implemented in PSCAD/EMTDC, are
compared with actual data in two case studies. First, the avail-
able data in [17], which are attributed to a real arc furnace plant
installed in Northern Italy, are compared with the results of
the proposed two-step parameter identification method (Case I).
Then, the proposed method is validated by using the data ob-
tained from measurement on a real arc furnace plant in Tabriz,
Iran (Case II).
The measurements used in the proposed method are only the
phase voltage and current of the arc. Sampling is performed
with a certain number of samples per half cycle. At each sam-
pling time, the instantaneous values of the arc current and the arc
voltage are extracted from the waveforms. The arc current sam-
pled point is also fed into the model implemented in PSCAD/
EMTDC. Obtaining the output voltage, the objective function is
formed in each half cycle. Then using GA, an estimation of the
model parameters is achieved separately for each half cycle.
In this paper, GA is used with following parameters which
result in the most accurate estimation. These values are obtained
MOUSAVI AGAH et al.: PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF ARC FURNACE BASED ON STOCHASTIC NATURE OF ARC LENGTH
TABLE II
TOLERANCE LIMITS FOR THE PARAMETERS OF THE ARC
FURNACE MODEL USED IN SIMULATION
TABLE III
VARIATION OF THE ESTIMATED PARAMETERS OF THE ARC
FURNACE MODEL USING THE PROPOSED METHOD
subsequently to a trial-and-error procedure.
Population size: 30
Maximum number of generations: 100
Crossover probability: 0.5
Mutation probability: 0.08.
For better functionality of the algorithm, the tolerance limit of
each parameter should be determined. It is noted that the upper
and lower tolerance limits for the parameters were determined
based on data available in the literature [17], [19], and [20]. In
some cases, when little data were available, the tolerance limit
was chosen heuristically large enough. Table II provides the tol-
erance limits for the parameters used in this study.
A. Case I: Arc Furnace Plant Installed in Northern Italy
The summary of results obtained in this case is depicted in
Table III. The simulation is carried out by using the data pre-
sented in Appendix A.
In this study, sample rate is selected to be five samples per half
cycle. The observation window contains 100 half cycles. There-
fore, step 1 of the proposed method is carried out for each half
cycle, resulting in 100 runs for the whole observation window.
2863
Half-cycle intervals are arranged in such a way that the deriva-
tive of the arc current is positive in odd half cycles, and reversely
its value is negative in even half cycles. In Table III, the dash sign
corresponds to parameters which cannot be estimated in some
half cycles. For example, the estimated value for is marked
by a dash in even half cycles. This is because the derivative of
arc current is negative in these half cycles. In the first column
of Table III, a list of arc furnace parameters is presented. In this
table, only some half cycles of the observation window (100 half
cycles) have been selected for more accurate investigation. The
estimated value of each parameter is shown in each half cycle
(columns 2 to 7). Based on the reported data in Table III, there
are some differences between the estimated values of the deter-
ministic variables in different half cycles.
The average value of the estimated parameters in all half cy-
cles of the observation window is shown in the eighth column.
Fig. 5 shows how the values of the estimated parameters vary
during half cycles of the observation window. The average value
is depicted by bolted horizontal line in the figure.
As mentioned previously, the variation of the estimated
values for the deterministic parameters is related to the max-
imum generation numbers in GA. The data needed to investigate
the relationship between the generation size and the variances
of the deterministic variables are presented in Table IV. As is
shown in Table IV, variances of all parameters decrease more
or less, as the number of generations increases. Since the results
obtained with the maximum generation number of 100 are in
good agreement with the data presented in [17], it is assumed to
be the base case in the study. Fig. 6 shows the stochastic nature
of the arc length. It can be seen that the reference value of the
arc length is estimated at 30.35 cm and the maximum deviation
to 9.70 cm, which are in agreement with the data mentioned in
[17].
To summarize, Table V provides a comparison between the
results of the proposed method and the actual values of the pa-
rameters which are reported in [17]. The proposed method is
performed 1000 times to check validity of the obtained results.
The fourth column in Table V presents the average value of the
relative error between the data obtained from proposed method
over 1000 runs, and actual values. For further investigation, the
maximum and minimum relative errors for various parameters
are shown in columns 5 and 6 of Table V. From the reported
data, it can be seen that the proposed method will result in a
maximum relative error of about 5% in the worst case (max-
imum variation of arc length). As mentioned before, the accu-
racy of the proposed method depends on the sampling rate. This
is because of the evolutionary nature of the algorithm which is
used in this paper. Assuming the observation window size of 100
cycles, different numbers of samples are considered. The sam-
pling rate changes between 2, 3, and 5 samples per half cycle.
The results show that the relative errors of the different param-
eters decrease, as the sample rate increases. It is noted that in
case of and , the relative error decreases more, with the
increase of sampling rate. It is due to the relatively large tol-
erance limit considered for these parameters. Investigating the
results shows that five samples per half cycle provide a compro-
mise between the estimation accuracy and running time of the
2864
Fig. 5. Variation of deterministic parameters of arc furnace model in half cycles of the observation window: (a) C (in kikowatts).. (b) C (in kilowatts). (c) D
(in kiloamperes). (d) D (in kiloamperes). (e) A(V). (f) B(V/cm).
Fig. 6. Variation of the arc length estimated by using the proposed method.
algorithm. Therefore, in this paper, results are only shown for
this sampling rate.
B. Case II: Arc Furnace Plant in TABRIZ, IRAN
In this case, measurement is performed on a plant in Tabriz,
Iran. The plant consists of four electric arc furnaces. An elec-
tronic PQ meter was installed to measure the phase voltage and
current in one of the existing arc furnaces. The instantaneous
values of the arc current and voltage are then used by the pro-
posed method. The parameters of the studied arc furnace are
presented in Appendix B.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010
TABLE IV
VARIANCE OF ESTIMATED VALUES FOR DETERMINISTIC VARIABLES IN HALF
CYCLES OF THE OBSERVATION WINDOW
Similar to Case I, simulation is performed for an observa-
tion window of 100 half cycles, with 5 samples per half cycle.
The summary of the obtained results is presented in Table VI.
This table provides the estimated parameters of the electric arc
furnace, based on the model presented in Section II. The pro-
posed method is performed 1000 times. The values reported
in Table VI for identified parameters correspond to an average
value among 1000 runs of the proposed method. To verify the
accuracy of the obtained results, it is important to make sure
that the identified values result in arc current and voltage wave-
form similar to those obtained from the measurement. The val-
MOUSAVI AGAH et al.: PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF ARC FURNACE BASED ON STOCHASTIC NATURE OF ARC LENGTH
TABLE V
COMPARISON BETWEEN THE ESTIMATED PARAMETERS OF THE ARC FURNACE
MODEL USING THE PROPOSED METHOD AND REAL DATA PRESENTED IN [17]
Fig. 7. Electric arc furnace current waveform over the entire observation
window obtained from (a) measurement and (b) the proposed method.
idation process is performed by applying the identified param-
eters to the arc furnace model. Figs. 7 and 8 show the arc cur-
rent and voltage waveform derived from the proposed method,
respectively. The figures are illustrated over the entire observa-
tion window. With these figures, it is found that the arc current
and voltage waveform derived by the proposed method are con-
sistent with the actual system waveforms.
In order to prove the results of the proposed method, the
short-term flicker severity index associated with the
voltage waveforms obtained from measurement and simulation
are computed, and the results are given in Table VII. As can be
2865
Fig. 8. Electric arc furnace voltage waveform over the entire observation
window obtained from the (a) measurement and (b) proposed method.
TABLE VI
IDENTIFIED PARAMETER VALUES FOR A REAL ARC FURNACE IN TABRIZ, IRAN
TABLE VII
FLICKER SEVERITY INDEX FOR THE SIMULATED
AND MEASURED VOLTAGE WAVEFORMS
seen, the short-term flicker severity indices of both waveforms
are approximately the same. Therefore, Table VII implies that
the proposed method based on the two-stage optimization
technique can effectively incorporate the stochastic nature of
arc length in parameter identification of electric arc furnaces.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a two-step optimization method has been
proposed to identify parameters of the nonlinear time-varying
model of the arc furnace. The performance of the proposed
method was quite satisfactory in the computational experi-
ments. Its capability to consider the stochastic nature of the
arc has made it a powerful method for modeling arc furnaces
in real applications. The results of the simulations have shown
robustness of the GA in the field of parameter estimation for an
2866
electric arc furnace. The proposed method has been suggested
to be applied in modeling other electric systems in which the
deterministic and stochastic variables exist together.
APPENDIX
A. Arc Furnace Plant Installed in Northern Italy
Parameters of an electric arc furnace plant installed in
northern Italy are presented here. The parameters are used in
the first case study in this paper.
Source: An upstream network is modeled by using an ideal
sinusoidal ac voltage source with an amplitude of 220 kV and
Thevenin inductance of . 1994.
HV/MV transformer: Two windings linear single-phase
transformer. Nominal power: 95 MVA, nominal voltage ratio:
220/21 kV, short-circuit voltage and losses 12.5% and 0.5%,
respectively.
MV/LV transformer: Two windings linear single-phase
transformer. Nominal power: 60 MVA, nominal voltage ratio:
21/0.6 kV, short-circuit voltage and losses 10% and 0.5%,
respectively.
Flexible cable: resistance , inductance
. [15] Task Force on Harmonics Modeling and Simulation, “Modelling
B. Arc Furnace Plant in Tabriz, Iran
Parameters of a real electric arc furnace plant installed in
Tabriz, Iran are presented here. The parameters are used in the
second case study in this paper.
Source: Upstream medium-voltage (MV) network is modeled
as an ideal source with an amplitude of 20 kV, which has the
following parameters: 0.0097 p.u., 0.0882 p.u.,
0.0124 p.u., p.u. Moreover, an existing local
generator is modeled by using the following parameters
0.005 p.u., 2.0446 p.u., 0.005 p.u., 0.200 p.u.,
0.457 s.
MV cable: 21 m of XLPE cable, 3 (1 70) mm .
MV/LV transformer: two windings single-phase transformer.
Nominal power: 4 MVA, nominal voltage ratio: 20/0.4 kV,
impedance 7.5%.
Flexible cable: 46 m of PVC cable, 3 (3 185) mm .
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S. M. Mousavi Agah (M’10) was born in Rasht,
Iran, on December 4, 1984. He received the B.Sc.
and M.Sc. degrees (Hons.) in electrical engineering
from Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT),
Tehran, Iran, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering at AUT.
His areas of research are power quality, power
system protection, distributed generation systems,
and probabilistic analysis of power systems. He
has a lot of experience in protection, control, and
automation of high-voltage substations in Iran.
MOUSAVI AGAH et al.: PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF ARC FURNACE BASED ON STOCHASTIC NATURE OF ARC LENGTH 2867

S. H. Hosseinian was born in Iran in 1961. He re-
ceived the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical en-
gineering from Amirkabir University of Technology
(AUT), Tehran, Iran, in 1985 and 1988, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
the University of Newcastle, U.K., in 1995.
Currently, he is Assistant Professor in the Elec-
trical Engineering Department at AUT. His special
fields of interest include transients in power systems,
power quality, restructuring, and deregulation in
power systems. He is the author of four books in the
field of power systems. He is also the author and coauthor of many technical
papers.
N. Moaddabi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1984. He
received the B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical
power engineering from Amirkabir University of
Technology (AUT), Tehran, Iran, in 2006 and 2008,
respectively, where he is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree in power electrical engineering.
His research interests include power quality, power
system protection, power electronics, and distributed
generation systems. He has a lot of experience in pro-
tection and control design of high-voltage substations
in Iran.

H. Askarian Abyaneh (SM’09) was born in

Abyaneh, Isfahan, on March 20, 1953. He re-
ceived the B.S. degree in electrical power system
engineering from Iran University of Science and
Technology in 1976 and the M.S. degree in electrical
power system engineering from Tehran University,
Tehran, Iran, in 1982. He received a second M.S.
degree and Ph.D. degree in electrical power system
engineering from the University of Manchester
Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester,
U.K., in 1985 and 1988, respectively.
Currently, he is a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, working in the area of relay
protection and power quality. He has been published in many scientific papers
in international journals and conferences.