Identifying switched capacitor relative locations and energizing operations

Capacitor banks are commonly connected to the power system to enhance its reliability by providing voltage support, improving power factor, and increasing the system capacity. They are usually switched in and out of the system according to the amount of connected load. This paper analyzes the measurement data of a distribution utility with shunt capacitor banks located downstream from the power quality monitor. An algorithm is proposed to identify both energizing and de-energizing capacitor switching events. It is tested in a dataset of 829 files, containing 358 energizing events, 8 de-energizing events, recloser operation during fault, and files with no transient event. Both capacitor energizing and de-energizing identification algorithms were observed to achieve high accuracy ratios, with a small number of misclassifications.