Power Quality and Voltage Sag Indices in Electrical Power Systems

Abstract

In modern electrical power systems, electricity is produced at generating stations, transmitted through a high voltage network, and finally distributed to consumers. Due to the rapid increase in power demand, electric power systems have developed extensively during the 20th century, resulting in today’s power industry probably being the largest and most complex industry in the world. Electricity is one of the key elements of any economy, industrialized society or country. A modern power system should provide reliable and uninterrupted services to its customers at a rated voltage and frequency within constrained variation limits. If the supply quality suffers a reduction and is outside those constrained limits, sensitive equipment might trip, and any motors connected on the system might stall. The electrical system should not only be able to provide cheap, safe and secure energy to the consumer, but also to compensate for the continually changing load demand. During that process the quality of power could be distorted by faults on the system, or by the switching of heavy loads within the customers facilities. In the early days of power systems, distortion did not impose severe problems towards end-users or utilities. Engineers first raised the issue in the late 1980s when they discovered that the majority of total equipment interruptions were due to power quality disturbances. Highly interconnected transmission and distribution lines have highlighted the previously small issues in power quality due to the wide propagation of power quality disturbances in the system. The reliability of power systems has improved due to the growth of interconnections between utilities. In the modern industrial world, many electronic and electrical control devices are part of automated processes in order to increase energy efficiency and productivity. However, these control devices are characterized by extreme sensitivity in power quality variations, which has led to growing concern over the quality of the power supplied to the customer. According to the IEEE defined standard (IEEE Std. 1100, 1999), power quality is “The concept of powering and grounding electronic equipment in a manner suitable to the operation of that equipment and compatible with the premise wiring system and other connected equipment”. Some authors use the term ‘voltage quality’ and others use ‘quality of supply’ to refer to the same issue of power quality. Others use the term ‘clean power’ to refer to an intolerable disturbance free supply. Power quality is defined and documented in established standards as reliability, steady state voltage controls and harmonics. Voltage sag is defined as a short reduction in voltage magnitude for a duration of time, and is