Development Of Power Quality Monitoring Network Node

Power quality describes the characteristics of voltage and current in power system in a specific place at a given time. Factors influencing power quality vary from the electric pulse in millisecond to long term voltage fluctuation. Study on power quality imposes specific requirements on the measuring devices. It also requires sophisticated software to handle large amount of real-time data. Power quality network monitoring devices are installed in either the power grids or at customer end to monitor the system" s real-time power quality. Based on those measured data, the power quality in the power system can be analyzed and thus controlled more efficiently, precisely and systematically.This paper discusses the techniques to develop power quality network monitoring devices by using the technologies in DSP (digital signal processing). By combining the latest breakthroughs in DSP and PC (personal computer), the proposed power quality network monitoring device in this paper is capable of major functions provided by conventional power quality monitoring device, such as frequency analysis, long term voltage fluctuation and transient voltage analysis. It also provides an option to record the waveforms of the inputs. Besides, in order to conform to the new standards in power quality monitoring network, the proposed device also provides direct data transfer over the internet by adopting the latest technologies in embedded system. The device can function as an independent node in the \\hole power quality monitoring network. The TCP/IP protocol is used in the developed device as its network interface. All these characteristics simplifies the data handling for the power quality monitoring network server installed in the power grids. Detailed discussion on the advanced algorithms for data handling such as neural network ^ not included in this paper.