APPLICATION

OF SIGNAL :PROCESSING1rOOLS FOR POWER QUALITY

ANALYSIS
Francisco J u d o , Natividad Acero, Blas Ogayar
University of J a h
f j urado@ujaen.e!;, naceroaujaen.es, bogayar@ujaen.es
Abstract
This paper presents the application of signal
processing tools for power quality anaksis. Three signal
processing techniques are considered: the discrete
Fourier transforms, the wavelet filters and the discrete
short-time Fourier transforms. It is designed an
adjustable speed drive with a six-pulse converter using
EMTPATP and it is presented normal energizing of utility
capacitors. Finally, each kind of electrical disturbance is
a n a b e d with example representing each tool. A
qualitative comparison of results shows the advantages
and drawbacks of each signal processing technique
applied to power quality analysis.

Keywords: Discrete short time Fourier transforms; power

quality; wavelet transforms.

1. INTRODUCTION
In signal processing the time-frequency domain has
often been exploited for analyzing signals with fast
changmg spectral contents. The wavelet analysis [1]-[3]
can be used for similar purposes, and has been exploited
recently for several types of voltage and current
disturbances [4]-[lo] and for power system protection
[ll]. Several possible power system applications for
wavelet analysis have been proposed, among others:
automated disturbance classification [81; identification
using wavelet-based neural classifier [4], [5]; propagation
of power system transients [7]; detection of faults [ll],
[12]; and visualization of time varying harmonics [13].
The stated advantage of using wavelets compared to
Fourier transform [14]-[I61 is the trade-off between
frequency and time resolution at different frequencies.
Harmonic analysis has obvious advantages in a linear
system and is therefore widely used in power system
engineering. The most widely used analysis involves the
fundamental (50 or 60 Hz) component, which is again a
harmonic (sinusoidal) signal. When using wavelet
transforms it is often difficult to extract the fundamental
Proceedmgs of the 2002 IEEE Canadian Conference
on Electrical 62 Computer Engineering
0-7803-7514-9/02/$17.00 0 2002 IEEE

or any other single harmonic component of the signal.

However, several methods have been presented for
elimirtating the effect of imperfect frequency response of
the filters in wavelet transforms [ 171, [181. For an analysis
tool to become widely excerpted in power system
engineering, it is important thzt it enables analysis in terms
of harmonic signals.
This paper shows how the spectral contents as a
function of time can be obtained by using the so-called
Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) [ 191, [20].
Although the STFT has a fixed frequency resolution for all
frequencies once the size of the window is chosen, it
enables an easier interpretation in terms of harmonics.
Studies of power quality phenomena have emerged as
an important subject in recent years due to renewed
interest in improvlng the quality of the electricity supply.
As sensitive electronic equipment continues to proliferate,
the studies of power quality will be M e r emphasized.
The identifying features are derived from welldocumented theories [15], [ 161, [21]-[24], power
engineers heuristics gained through long years of
experience, and power quality data collected in recent
years

2. POWER QUALITY EVENTS

An Adjustable speed drives (ASD) consists of a
rectifier, a direct current link, and an inverter [25], [26].
There are two mechanisms through which an ASD
generates harmonic currents. The first mechanism is the
rectifier operation, whxh injects harmonic currents into
the siipply system by an electronic switching process. The
second mechanism is the inverter operation. The inverter
can introduce additional ripples into the DC link current.
These ripples in turn can penetrate into the supply system
side. The extent and the frequency of invertercaused
ripples are largely a function of inverter design and motor
parameters. An ASD can therefore be represented with a
generic three-phase bridge converter circuit. A feature of
this circuit is that the inverter and the motor are
collectively modeled as a current source. The magnitudes
and phase angles should be determined from the inverter
design and motor operating conditions.
Capacitor energizing transient events are one of the

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most common transient events present in power systems.

The transient events occur when a capacitor is switched
on The transient frequency is determined by the
combination of the capacitance of the capacitor bank and
the system inductance. The oscillation frequency in the
voltage waveform is typically between 300-1000 Hz and
lasts for less than half a cycle of the power frequency.
There are several kinds of capacitor energizing events.
They are switched into the system in anticipation of load
increase at a customer site, to correct power factor, to
support voltage on the system, and so on. This
energization of utility capacitors is considered normal
energizing.
At the switching instant, the voltage in the capacitor
cannot change instantaneously. The bus voltage is pulled
down, and then rises as the capacitor begins to charge.
During the process, the capacitor voltage may overshoot
and ring at the natural frequency. The overvoltage in
normal energizing is usually between 1.1-1.4 p.u
One of the most common identifying features for
normal energizing of utility capacitors is the polarity of
the step voltage. The voltage step at the instant of closing
cannot go beyond zero if the capacitor has no initial net
charge at the closing instant or if the capacitor is
grounded.

3. DISCRETE STFI
Discrete Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) is used
for time-frequency analysis of nonstationary signals,
where the use of Fourier transform alone becomes
inadequate. Discrete STFT decomposes the time-varying
signal into time-frequency domain components; hence it
provides an insight in the time-evolution of each signal
component. Given a signal x(n) the discrete STFT for
frequency band k at time n is defined as (1)
X ( P k )= &(m)w(n

-mk-km

(1)

= 2zWN
is the frequency in radians
is the number of frequency bands
w (m) is the selected symmetric window of size L, L I N
if signal reconstructionis required.

It follows that (1) is equivalent to

X (elm )= e-otx,(O,)
where

S, = f , k / N (Hz)

(5)

Discrete STFT in (2) can be viewed as the lowpass

representations of bandpass filter outputs. All bandpass
filters have an equal bandwidth determined by the selected
window. For Hamming window of size L, the bandwidth
of the bandpass filters is

2B=4f,/LW)

(6)

The bandwidth in (6) is defined as the width of the main

lobe of the window iiequency response [19].
Alternatively, one can use the RMS bandwidth, which is
defined as

W (w)is the bandpass filter frequency response

llwll is the norm of w

W *= (1 /pqr )J@IW(W]*do,is the center of JVw) P I .
0

Once the size of a window function is chosen, there is a

fixed frequency resolution over all bands. If one wishes to

have different resolutions in different parts of the
frequency spectrum, the discrete STFT should be repeated
for a number of window sizes.
By using discrete STFT one can split the original signal
into a set of bandpass filter outputs. Center frequencies
and bandwidth of the filters can be chosen freely by using
(5) and (6), which are determined by the number of
bandpass filters N (half of them are with the positive
center frequencies) and the size of the window L. For the
analysis of power system harmonics one may choose the
center frequencies of bandpass filters at the harmonics of
the power system frequency (50 or 60 E),such that the
disturbances at different harmonics can be analyzed.
Note that the STFT does not give harmonics as in a
Fourier series, as those are only defined for a periodic
signal. The so-called pseudo-harmonics resulting from
the STFT are the output signals of bandpass filters
centered at the harmonic frequencies (i.e. integer multiples
of the fundamental frequency). For a periodic signal and
narrow filter bands, the outputs of these filters correspond
to the actual harmonics. The bandwidth determines how
many harmonic frequencies each band contains.

4. WAVELET TRANSFORM

is the output of the kth complex bandpass filter, with

impulse response hdn) and center frequencyh

h,(n)= w(n)e@kn

k=O,1,...N-1

(4)

Wavelet filters can be used for time-scale domain

analysis. A wavelet transform can be explained by the

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filter bank theory [l], where a wavelet and a scaling

function is associated respectively with a high and a low
bandpass filter. Compared to discrete STFT one advantage
of wavelet filters is the much lower redundancy in signal
components.
Dyadic wavelet filters can be used for multi-resolution
signal decomposition. To implement it, the input signal is
split into a low and a high-frequency component. Only the
low-frequency component is further split into a low and a
high-frequency one. The process repeats for a number of
times (the number of scales). The dyadic wavelets
correspond to band-pass filters with an octave bandwidth.
Contrary to that, one can form wavelet filters with an
equal bandwidth, using the so-called Binary-Tree
Wavelet Filters (BT-WFs). This is obtained by repeatedly
splitting both the low and the high-frequency components
for several levels.
For dyadic wavelet filters, denote the set of bands,
starting fiom
the
lowest
frequency,
as
(bl,b, ,...,b,,b,+,) for a total of M scales, the
corresponding bandwidths in (8) are (BA,BM,.
..,B,, B, ) and
the center frequencies in (9) are (JA, f , ,...,f,,X). The
filter bandwidth at scale k is

EMTP/ATP. The analysis is tested on a system consists of

13 buses and is representative of a medum-sized
industrial plant [27]. The syskm is shown in Fig.1 and
described by the data in Tables 1 and 2 . It is presented the
normaJ energizing of utility capacitor and the switchmg
instant is at 133 ms. Additional data used to conduct a
harmcmic analysis of the system include the following:
1. The plant power factor correction capacitors are
rated at 6000 kvar. Compensation is modeled by
lumped RLC branches.
2. Lines are represented by PI-equivalents.
3. The displacement power factor for the drive load is
0.97 lagging. This high power factor is typical of
drives operated at or near full load.
4. A parallel RL representation is used based on the
aggregate power of the load.
5. Connection type for transformer and shunt elements
is also considered.
6. The harmonics currents injected in bus 7 are
specified for an ASD with a six-pulse converter.

where BA is the bandwidth of the approximate filter.

The center frequency of the filter at scale k is

For BT-WFs the filter bandwidth is a constant

and the filter center frequencies

Fig. 1. Test system.

B,, = f,/2,+,

CfifZ...fZY

) are

f , = (k - 0.5)f, /2M+1

k= 1,2, ..., 2M

Tablle I Generation, Load, and Bus Voltage Data.

Base case

(10)

The bandwidths of dyadic wavelet filters and BT-WFs

are RMS bandwidth, which is the RMS spread of filter
frequency response [2]. S d a r l y , for wavelet filters a fine
frequency-resolution implies a coarse time-resolution.
Comparing the frequency responses, the pattern for BTWFs is similar but less symmetric than that of the discrete
STFT. This could be a problem in interpreting the results;
the number of harmonic frequencies in each band is e.g.
not constant. In BT-WFs, there is a fixed and equal
bandwidth for all filters once the number of scales is
selected, which is similar to that in STFT.

-1

5. RESULTS
The simulation examples presented are based on the

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

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100.00
99.89
99.59
99.64
101.88
99.56
101.94
104.06
99.56
99.52
99.31
103.30
101.64

7450

540

2000

1910

2240

2000

600

530

1150
1310

290
1130

370
2800
810

330
2500
800

Table II. Theoretical and typical harmonic

currents for six-pulse Converters
h

Ifi-mle
Typical

200
,173

7
11
,143 .091
.111 .045

13
.077

,029

17
19
.059 ,053
,015 .010

addition, they are also beneficial for malung decisions.

Figs. 6-9 are obtained using MATLAB [3 I].

23
.043
.009

loo,

Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) cannot be relied on

to acheve valid harmonic component identification [28].
The limitations of the DFT for non-periodic signals can be
illustrated using a signal containing a transient impulse,
such a signal is typical of a capacitor s w i t c h transient.
The waveforms are shown in Figs. 2 and 3 and the
resulting DFT outputs are depicted in Figs. 4 and 5. These
figures are obtained using TOP [29].
Figs. 6 and 7 show two examples in which discrete
STFT is used to obtain pseudo-haxmonic signals. Figs. 6
and 7 are associated with a high frequency-resolution and
a high time-resolution case, respectively. Since the
product of time and frequency resolution remains a
constant according to the Heisenberg-Gabor's uncertainty
principle [2],

Af .At 2 114n

CurrentX0001A-XX0054
I

Fig. 2. Waveforms. Current due to ASD.

(1 1)

the high frequency resolution implies a low

time-resolution, and vice versa.
Fig. 6 contains the output from STFT, with the size of
the Hamming window L = 256 corresponding to a higher
resolution in frequency-domain. This value was chosen
experimentally because it presents a better frequency
resolution. The sampling frequency was set at 4 kHz,
which satisfies the Nyquist limit. The window size makes
any time variation within one cycle be confused. High
frequency-resolutionharmonic signals may provide useful
information for analyzing power system harmonics. A
larger harmonic component is represented by a brighter
area.
In Fig. 7 the Hamming window size is L = 16, resulting
in a higher time-resolution. The sampling frequency was
set at 13.5 kHz. Each filter output contains too many
hannonic frequencies, which is not very useful for
harmonic related analysis. However, this output is useful
to detect the transient changes of a signal.
By applying dyadic Daubechies wavelets, the timefrequency diagram of the individual waveforms are also
depicted in Figs. 8 and 9 . The frequency components
from 60 to 960 Hz are plotted. As indicated in discrete
STFT, a larger hannonic component is represented by a
brighter area. Observation of figures reveals the
harmonics that are more significant compared with other
harmonics 1301. These diagrams can be used for filter
design in order to suppress unwanted distortion. In

Fig. 3. Wavefonns. Energizing of utility capacitor.

Fig. 4. Discrete Fourier Transform. Current due to

ASD.

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Fig. 5. Discrete Fourier Transform. Energizing of

utility capacitor.
Fig. 8. Outputs from wavellet. Current due to ASD.

130 ms

150 mr

Fig. 9. Outputs from wavelet. Energizing of utility

capacitor.

Fig. 6. Outputs from discrete STFT. Current due

to ASD.

6. CONCILUSIONS

Fig. 7. Outputs from discrete STFT. Energizing of

utility capacitor.

As power system disturbances are subject to transient

and non-periodic components, the DFT alone can be an
inadequate technique for signal analysis. If a signal is
a1tert:d in a localized time instant, the entire frequency
spectrum can be affected.
Since the center frequencies of the band-pass filters
associated with the discrete STFT can be freely chosen,
discrete STFT is more suitable for harmonic analysis. By
selecting a small window length, STFT is able to detect
transient positions in disturbance data.
Dyadic wavelet is more suitable for detecting localized
transient structures. More precisely, fme time resolution
for short duration and high frequency signals, and fine
frequency resolution for long duration and lower
frequency signals are needed. Signal components have

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less redundancy. On the other hand, the center frequencies

of band-pass filters are fixed once the number of scales is
chosen, which leads to inconvenient center frequencies for
harmonic analysis. BT-WF is very similar to STFT,
however with compact decomposed signals, but inflexible
filter center frequencies.
Hence, the choice of these signal-processing tools
depends on particular applications.

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