A survey of distribution feeder power quality

Due to the growing use of sensitive equipment, the power quality (PQ) requirements are becoming much stricter. Many of the equipment malfunctions are due to various PQ problems. Before the mitigations of PQ problems are decided, a monitoring system should be setup to find out the causes of PQ problems. In this study a voltage quality monitoring system was setup in order to understand the power service quality and the seasonal changes of PQ indices of different feeders serving different types of customers. The recorded data are used to calculate different PQ parameters such as voltage sag indices, total harmonic distortion (THD), and voltage flicker.

I. Introduction

MANY industrial and commercial customers have equipment that are sensitive to voltage quality problems that are due to the system disturbances, it is important to understand the quality of power being provided. In the last few decades many utility companies have implemented extensive power quality monitoring programs. These programs are often driven by the demand for improving the system power quality performance [1], [2].