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2, APRIL 2007
AbstractThis paper proposes a method for analyzing measure- shorter duration, transients require a wider band-width measure-
ments of voltage transients in three-phase systems. The method is ment circuit and higher sampling rate. Therefore, large-scale
based on the Clarke transform introduced in 1950 for calculations data collection of transients is much less common than data col-
of travelling waves along three-phase transmission lines. The pro-
posed method also shows close similarities with the classification lection for dips and interruptions. All of this has led to an un-
of three-phase unbalanced voltage dips. After extracting the actual derexposure of transients in the power-quality literature. How-
transient (e.g., by using a notch filter centered on the power-system ever, also voltage transients may have adverse consequences on
frequency), the three signals are decomposed into seven compo- end-user equipment, including maloperation and damage.
nents. From the relation between these seven components, the dom- Low-frequency transients (from 250 Hz up to several hundred
inant component is identified. The method is successfully applied
to a number of measured transients. The paper also identifies the Hertz) due to capacitor-bank energizing have received the most
limitations of the method and gives suggestions for future work. attention in the power-quality literature due to their adverse im-
pact on adjustable speed drives (e.g., [8] and [9]). Phenomena,
Index TermsCapacitor energizing, electromagnetic compat- such as current-chopping and restrike after capacitor de-ener-
ibility (EMC), power quality, power-system transients, power gizing, may also lead to severe transients and equipment mal-
transmission and distribution.
operation or damage.
Different methods are available for the analysis and charac-
terization of transients, but all of these methods consider each
I. INTRODUCTION phase separately. No method is available for addressing tran-
sient multiphase measurements. Transients in three-phase sys-
tems are complicated, especially when switching actions in the
RANSIENTS are subcycle deviations from the normal
T voltage or current waveform. A number of causes of
transients can be identified: lightning strokes, switching actions
three phases take place close together in time. The development
of a three-phase analysis or classification method for power-
system transients would simplify the characterization of three-
in the distribution or transmission system, self-clearing faults phase transients. More importantly, it would allow the further
or faults cleared by current-limiting fuses, and the switching of development of methods for extracting additional information
end-user equipment. The latter mainly causes local transients from recordings of voltage and current transients in three-phase
within the customer premises, whereas distribution or trans- systems, such as direction and origin.
mission-system switching causes transients for a larger number Motivated by the above issues, a method will be proposed
of customers. The origin of transients in the grid is described in in this paper for the decomposition of voltage and current tran-
detail in a number of books: [1], [2] and more recently [3]. sients in three-phase systems. The paper starts with a general
In the power-quality literature, transients are mainly treated discussion on analysis of transients in Section II, to explain the
as a disturbance occurring at the terminals of equipment, where role of the proposed method in the overall processing of tran-
the emphasis is on single-event characteristics as rise-time, peak sients. The theoretical foundation of the decomposition method
voltage and duration. A good overview of transient test wave- is presented in Section III. Section III also shows the equiv-
forms and their origin is presented in [4, Ch. 10]. Transients alence between the proposed method and the classification of
are an important part of the power-quality mitigation issues dis- three-phase unbalanced voltage dips and discusses a method for
cussed in [5]. Transients are further treated in [6, Ch. 4] and [7, determining the dominant component. A number of measure-
Ch. 6 and 7]. ment examples are presented in Section IV. Some limitations
Transients do not normally cause the widespread inconve- and implementation issues are described in Section V. As this
nience as interruptions or dips. The consequences of a tran- is a new method a discussion on further work including testing
sient are in many cases limited to local equipment. Because the is part of Section VI. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper.
Manuscript received November 7, 2005; revised June 5, 2006. Paper no. II. ANALYSIS OF TRANSIENTS
TPWRD-00651-2005.
M. H. J. Bollen is with STRI AB, Ludvika, 771 80, Sweden and also The overall analysis of transients in three-phase systems, as
with Lule University of Technology, Skellefte 931 87, Sweden (e-mail: envisaged by the authors, is shown schematically in Fig. 1. From
math.bollen@stri.se). the three measured voltages the actual transient is extracted. The
I. Y. H. Gu is with the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers Uni-
versity of Technology, Gothenburg 412 96, Sweden. decomposition algorithm proposed in this paper is applied to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.893613 the extracted transient, resulting in seven components. After the
0885-8977/$25.00 2007 IEEE
BOLLEN AND GU: ON THE ANALYSIS OF VOLTAGE AND CURRENT TRANSIENTS 1195
A. Clarke Transform
The start of the decomposition method is the so-called Clarke
transform as introduced by E. Clarke [14] to simplify calcu-
lations of travelling waves along overhead transmission lines.
The method is discussed among others in [15, Sec. 5.4] and in
[16, Sec. 6.2.1]. The Clarke transform relates phase voltages and
component voltages through the following matrix expression:
Fig. 1. Analysis chain of transients in three-phase power systems.
and (3) in terms of changes in complex voltage, results for type with an inverse transformation
Da in
(11)
(4) Note that the zero-sequence component is the same in all three
and for type Ca in cases, so that only seven different components exist. All seven
components can be obtained from the phase voltages by com-
bining (7), (9), and (11), resulting in the following matrix ex-
pression:
(5)
(9)
(13)
and for the Dc and Cc components
The Da component is the dominating component (the one
with the highest absolute value), but four other components also
have a non-zero value. Only the Ca and zero-sequence compo-
(10) nents are zero: Da, Ca, and the zero-sequence component form
orthogonal bases.
BOLLEN AND GU: ON THE ANALYSIS OF VOLTAGE AND CURRENT TRANSIENTS 1197
(14)
Fig. 4. The 2-ms rms values for the six components in Example I: Da and Ca
(left); Db and Cb (center); Dc and Cc (right). The D components are indicated
by solid lines; the C components by dashed lines.
Fig. 7. Original waveforms (top left), extracted transients in the three phases
(top center), and the seven components for a measured transient. Example III.
Fig. 8. The 2-ms rms values for the six components in Example III: Da and Ca
Fig. 5. Original waveforms (top left), extracted transients in the three phases (left); Db and Cb (center); Dc and Cc (right). The D components are indicated
(top center), and the seven components for a measured transient. Example II. by solid lines; the C components by dashed lines.
Fig. 11. Original waveforms (top left), extracted transients in the three phases
Fig. 9. Original waveforms (top left), extracted transients in the three phases (top center), and the seven components for a measured transient. Example V.
(top center), and the seven components for a measured transient. Example IV.
Fig. 12. The 2-ms rms values for the six components in Example V: Da and Ca
(left); Db and Cb (center); Dc and Cc (right). The D components are indicated
by solid lines; the C components by dashed lines.
Fig. 10. The 2-ms rms values for the six components in Example IV: Da and Ca
(left); Db and Cb (center); Dc and Cc (right). The D components are indicated
by solid lines; the C components by dashed lines.
E. Example V
VI. CONCLUSION
Fig. 15. Difference between the rms values for Da and Ca (solid); Db and Cb A method has been proposed for decomposing a three-phase
(dashed); and Dc and Cc (dotted), for Example VI.
voltage or current transient into seven components. The method
is based on the Clarke transform, but contrary to the Clarke
transform the resulting components are non-orthogonal. The re-
are needed to understand such complex transients, for example sult is a cross-coupling between the components. It is shown that
a large number of simulated transients using an electromag- the proposed method is equivalent to a method for classification
netic-transient-type power-system analysis package. of three-phase unbalanced voltage dips and to methods used for
travelling-wave-based protection of transmission lines.
The method has been applied to a number of transients mea-
V. LIMITATIONS OF THE METHOD
sured at different voltage levels. It has been possible to identify
The proposed method for characterization and classification the dominant component for most of the studied cases. A further
of transients in three-phase systems gives a satisfactory result study of a large number of transient recordings, preferably with
for most of the measured transients studied by the authors. The a known origin, is needed to find the limitations of the method.
method is, however, based on the underlying assumption that Simulations are needed to generate further test waveforms, es-
no two switching actions occur at the same time. In Example V pecially for more complex events.
the two switching actions could still be distinguished because Further work is also needed towards the development of a
their time difference was somewhat more than one cycle of the more advanced method for determining the dominant compo-
transient oscillation. Any smaller difference in time will make nent. In this paper a simple rms-based method was used, but
that it is no longer possible to extract a dominant component. this limits the range of oscillation frequencies that can be cov-
The same holds when three switching actions occur shortly after ered. Model-based methods may be more appropriate.
each other. An example of a non-classifiable transient is Ex- The proposed method may find applications in the charac-
ample VI in the previous section. terization of voltage and current transients in three-phase sys-
There are a number of reasons why the classification algo- tems and in the definition of standard waveforms for testing
rithm works less well for transients than for voltage dips. The of end-user equipment against voltage transients. However, the
first reason is due to the measurement method: the harmonic dis- most promising application envisaged by the authors is in auto-
tortion in the original waveform causes an error in the extracted matic and manual methods for extracting additional information
transient. For small transients this may make the classification from disturbance recordings. Advanced signal-processing tools
more difficult. The second source of error is due to the method like wavelet filter banks and ESPRIT frequency decomposition
used for extracting the transient. A change in fundamental com- should be applied to the dominant component.
ponent leads to an oscillation in the output of a notch filter that The analysis method proposed in this paper only considers
adds to the actual transient. phase-to-phase and phase-to-neutral voltages. Transients af-
Another source of error is in the model used for the system. fecting the voltage difference between the neutral and the
The Clarke transform is based on a balanced model of the power protective earth cannot be studied by using this method. Other
system: all three phases are equal and the coupling between methods are needed or the proposed method may have to be
each pair of phases is equal. Whereas this is a reasonable model extended.
for fundamental frequency, it may no longer be acceptable for The proposed method may also be used to study the initia-
higher frequencies. The non-balanced character of the system tion of voltage dips due to fast-developing faults and the voltage
manifests itself as a coupling between the components: thus recovery taking place at different time instants in the different
Ca, Da, and zero-sequence are no longer fully decoupled. A phases after two-phase-to-ground or three-phase faults.
BOLLEN AND GU: ON THE ANALYSIS OF VOLTAGE AND CURRENT TRANSIENTS 1201