A gapless waveform recorder for monitoring Smart Grids

In the present paper a new concept of continuous waveform recording, or gapless waveform recording, applied to Electric Power System (EPS) signals is presented. It is shown that it is not necessary to store all the EPS signal samples, and still, keeping all the relevant information for a complete reconstruction of the signal for later oscillographic analysis. This allows store long periods of waveform measurements, spending little memory space. To make it possible, it is used the Novelty Detection Concept, that is performed by segmenting the signal into frames and comparing these frames in order to save only the ones in which some “novelty” is present. This approach contributes to the new context of Smart Grids (SGs), even in a future scenario where events that are not completely known might occur, since all the necessary waveform information is saved. Thus, the control system of the SG can use the stored signals to perform different analysis and take the suitable decision to improve the EPS performance.