Novel methodology for analysis and study of distribution feeder performance against lightning disturbances

Energy supply is a significant resource for economic and social development. Statistics show that the lightning phenomenon is one of the most important causes of power systems outage. On this context, the development of novel methodologies for the analysis and study of distribution feeder performance against direct and induced lightning has continually been imperative and wanted for researchers, utilities and society. With this purpose, traditional methodologies are usually carried out by manual processing. This paper introduces Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to extract patterns of different parameters useful to analyze the distribution feeder performance. Results show that PCA can easily extract patterns, which can be employed to develop different studies like sensitivity studies of flashover, back flashover occurrence, lightning stroke location.