A survey on modeling and simulation practices for teaching power harmonics

In recent years the undergraduate engineering curriculum of several areas has started to incorporate the study of harmonic distortion on electrical systems. Several education simulation tools have been developed and investigated, most of them a short time ago. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not any literature review on this topic. In this work, we present for the first time a systematic survey on educational tools to model and simulate the effect of power harmonics on industrial electrical networks. As a result, several improvement aspects have been identified and recommendations and implications for future research have been provided. For that, a retrospective study has been accomplished, showing a growing trend toward simulation and modeling. The key teachers’ perceptions to incorporate these practices are the ease of the teaching‐learning process and the importance of modeling and simulation in the industry. The main research challenge is the conduction of integral assessments that comprise both tools’ quality and use experience, and their contribution to achieve learning outcomes. Statistical tests should be used to validate the academic results obtained. This is a major challenge, since only a few of the existing studies incorporate such tests. Other implications for future research refer to the involvement of a higher number of students in the evaluations and the use of free software in the development of the applications.