DSP for the real time detection of power quality surge transients

Power-quality events are of increasing concern for the economy because today´s equipment, particularly computers and automated manufacturing devices, is highly sensitive to such imperfections. Metering technologies and communications systems have advanced to enable the development of DSP-based sensors. Power system surges, based on waveform shapes, can be classified into ldquooscillatory transientrdquo and ldquoimpulsive transientrdquo This paper investigates the challenges and possibilities in the development of a DSP power-quality event detection algorithm. It provides the real-time detection of transients without requiring a large amount of memory. It is presented its advantages as a simple and robust algorithm, over others well known proposal. Finally, the analysis of its performance in the time domain is addressed on a low-cost DSP board.