Optimal number and locations of power quality monitors considering system topology

This paper presents a monitor positioning algorithm to determine the optimal number of power quality monitors and to decide the locations for a given distribution system. From graph theory, the system topology is formulated into a coverage matrix. The weighting factors of each component are newly defined from the guidelines of monitor positioning suggested. Weighting factors represent the degree of importance in the system topology. Ambiguity indices are suggested to evaluate the monitor locations in terms of topological ambiguity. The optimal number and locations are determined from the optimization routine utilizing the weighting factor and the ambiguity indices. The proposed approach can realize the expert´s knowledge on monitor positioning into a sophisticated automatic computing algorithm.