There are several deleterious effects of high distortion in the current waveform and the poor power factor that results due to it. These are as follows:
- Power loss in utility equipment such as distribution and transmission lines, transformers, and generators increases, possibly to the point of overloading them.
- Harmonic currents can overload the shunt capacitors used by utilities for voltage support and may cause resonance conditions between the capacitive reactance of these capacitors and the inductive reactance of the distribution and transmission lines.
- The utility voltage waveform will also become distorted, adversely affecting other linear loads, if a significant portion of the load supplied by the utility draws power by means of distorted currents.