Detection of power quality disturbances using discrete wavelet transform

With the growing use of sensitive and susceptive electronic and computing equipment, power quality is foreseen to cause a great concern to electric utilities. The best analysis on power quality is vital to provide better service to customers. Disturbances in power system usually produce continuity changes in the power signal. Wavelet transform is particularly useful in detecting discontinuities in signals, and this makes it appropriate for detection of disturbances in power quality. Wavelet transform is proposed to detect and identify the power quality disturbance at its instance of occurrence. Power quality disturbances are sag, swell, interruption, transient and harmonic. This study reviews various kinds of power quality disturbances with the goal of detecting them using wavelet transform. The results show clearly various forms of changes in amplitude and frequency of the signals. The application shows that this method is fast, sensitive, and practical for detection and identification of power quality disturbance.