Evaluation of harmonic distortion and power quality in electrical netw
orks cannot neglect the stochastic approach, which takes into account
the random. nature of harmonics injected in the network by distorting
loads. In this paper, procedures are proposed to evaluate the resultan
t probability density and cumulative functions of the sum of harmonic
currents at buses of electrical networks. These procedures are applied
to the results of long-term measurements performed on MV networks, wh
ich supply both residential and industrial loads. It is shown that the
time series associated to real and imaginary components of harmonic c
urrents are, in general, non-stationary, so that the statistical tools
proposed in literature to evaluate the probability function of the ma
gnitude of the sum of random vectors may give inaccurate results. On t
he contrary, the proposed procedures allow accurate estimates of the s
um of harmonics, associated to given probabilities, to be achieved.