Embracing advance information technology in power quality monitoring

Power quality has been a pressing issue over the last decade and there are many attempts to determine the current level of power quality in existing power system networks. There is a growing list of monitoring and measurement schemes being initiated or contemplated around the globe. Some schemes make use of existing infrastructure such as digital fault recorders while others are wholly new systems. The majority of them have taken into consideration the advancements in Information Technology (IT), particularly the popularity of using the Internet to disseminate the processed results to the interested parties. This paper examines other advanced features available in the IT arena and demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of using them in other aspects of power quality monitoring. It illustrates the benefits to both the users and the developers of the system. It shows that advanced IT can be employed to simplify the acquisition of the voltage and current signals as well as to manage the collection, storage and distribution of the processed information. The proposed design can be extended to include intelligent analyses such as disturbance characterization and state estimations.