Studies of Power Quality: Disturbance Recognition

The issue of Power Quality is very important to both the consumers and the distributors of electric power. There are many facets of power quality disturbances and each has its own source and mitigation techniques. The first step towards any solution for a disturbance is to recognize the presence of a particular type of disturbance and locate its source. Conventional methods for recognition of a power quality disturbance consists of collecting operating data, inspecting the wave forms visually and then identifying any disturbance that may be present in the data. Although the available measuring and recording devices offer substantial help, the process is, in the main, very slow. At the University of Tasmania, a project is under way to automatize this process. The ultimate goal is to develop an Automatic Disturbance Recognition System (ADRS). In its current state, tests with simulated as well as real disturbance data yielded encouraging results, some of which are presented in this paper.