Power quality event detection based on the divide and conquer principle and innovation concept

The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel real-time digital signal processing technique for power quality disturbance detection. The proposed technique is inspired on the Divide and Conquer Principle and on the Innovation Concept. Essentially, the Divide and Conquer Principle is applied in splitting the monitored disturbance event into stationary and nonstationary components, allowing localized individual signal analysis. Thereafter, the Innovation Concept is introduced for revealing new information not previously observed in the energy of the nonstationary signals and so detecting a new event. In addition, this paper demonstrates a straightforward and feasible way to evaluate the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) or a distortion measure for voltage signals. Simulation results indicate that the proposed technique is able to accurately detect a variety of voltage disturbances.