Development of improved power quality detection methods suitable for modern applications

Discontinuities of service, variations in voltage magnitude, and distortions in AC voltage waveforms constitute the different aspects poor power quality. A poor quality of power supply can cause malfunction of sensitive equipment and interrupt industrial processes, resulting in significant economic losses. Utilities and consumers are taking actions to maintain the power quality set by the standards. Monitoring of power quality at all levels in the power system is necessary to ensure adherence to standards, but specialized power quality monitoring equipment are expensive. Cost of monitoring can be reduced if monitoring functions are integrated to multifunction devices such as fault recorders or protection relays. However, most advanced power quality event detection methods require significant computing power and their implementation on multifunction devices is challenging. The proposed research aims to develop improved power quality detection methods suitable to implement on a resource constrained computing environment.

Faculty Supervisor:

Athula Rajapakse

Student:

Jagannath Wijekoon

Partner:

ERL Phase Power Technologies

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Energy

University:

University of Manitoba