Estimation of power system disturbance location via localized metering and intelligent computing

The electric power industry is changing worldwide. The change is driven by deregulation whose goal is to promote competition. One of the keys to the economic success of the power companies will be the quality of the delivered power. New techniques and applications are being developed to monitor, analyze and improve power quality.; This dissertation deals with one of the most important tasks of power quality analysis: finding the location of unknown power disturbances. A new approach to location estimation using the ideas of pattern matching and vulnerability contours has been proposed. The main application characteristic of the proposed approach is limited metering.; The proposed approach has been applied to harmonic source identification. The concept of vulnerability contours has been generalized using total harmonic distortion (THD) factor. THD factors measured at selected locations are matched with the ones obtained through the simulations, while varying the source location. The best match determines the most likely solution.; The basic method for the short-circuit fault location estimation uses the magnitude voltage measurements obtained at selected system buses. The measured voltages are correlated with the ones calculated through multiple short-circuit simulations, while varying the fault resistance and location. Fuzzy reasoning is applied to suppress the influence of the noise.; The basic fault location estimation method is complemented with the method for fault area estimation. This method is based on the use of fault-generated transients. The travel time of the transient is used as the feature for waveform matching. Transient simulations are avoided since the method uses pre-calculated line travel times. An efficient approach is proposed for calculating representative travel times in case the system topology changes.; The performance of the developed methods may be greatly influenced by meter placement. A new method has been developed to find the optimal placement of voltage sag meters.