On Tracking the Source Location of Voltage Sags and Utility Shunt Capacitor Switching Transients

This paper presents a new procedure to track the disturbance source location of voltage sags and shunt capacitor switching transients in a power system based on branch current measurements. In the proposed method, the power-quality metering locations are first determined by the sensitivity of the system fault-current level to the fault voltage. Then, a current deviation index for representing the change of each measured branch current rms magnitudes before and after the disturbance is calculated to track the disturbance source location within an area confined by the directions of the top-priority branches. The IEEE 30-bus benchmark system and an actual transmission system with recorded power-quality disturbance events are used to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method. Simulation results obtained by the proposed method are also compared with those obtained by a previously developed approach and by actual recorded data. By observing the results, it shows that the proposed method is efficient and accurate to track the source area of voltage sags or shunt capacitor switching transients.