380 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO.

1, JANUARY 2008

Assessment of Feeder Voltage Regulation Using

Statistical Process Control Methods
Nitika V. Mago, Surya Santoso, Senior Member, IEEE, and Mark F. McGranaghan, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—Power-quality voltage and current transient wave- variations that may be an indication of a problem. Therefore,
form data have been explored rather extensively as the primary the statistical methods provide one additional indicator in pre-
input data in predictive maintenance, automatic root-cause anal- dicting possible system or equipment problems. Nonexhaustive
ysis, and evaluating system performance to indicate potential
problems. Unfortunately, very few efforts have been directed examples of problems that can be detected using process con-
toward making use of the voluminous steady-state data collected trol methods include but are not limited to abnormal load varia-
alongside waveform data. Therefore, this paper proposes to tions, arcing conditions, neutral connection problems, capacitor
use steady-state data, particularly, rms voltage data to detect bank problems, and voltage regulator problems. Capacitor bank
abnormal trend behavior that may be indicative of a problem. problems have been flagged using transient waveform data with
Specifically, this paper develops a statistical analysis algorithm
based on the well-known statistical process control methods for signal-processing methods [3]. Steady-state unbalance voltage
assessing feeder voltage regulation performance. The assessment and reactive power (var) flow data analyzed with the process
results can be used to indicate potential regulator problems as control methods can provide additional validation of capacitor
well. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated by applications problems.
to two sets of actual rms voltage data. The objective of this paper is to motivate a more widespread
Index Terms—Power quality (PQ), process control, statistics, use of steady-state data and applications of statistical process-
voltage control. control methods. Therefore, this paper presents novel statistical
analysis procedures to assess feeder voltage regulation using
steady-state rms voltage data. The outcome of the assessment
I. INTRODUCTION
can be used to indicate possible problems of the feeder voltage
OLTAGE and current waveshape or waveform data have regulation techniques and regulator or other related problems.
V been utilized extensively as part of a larger effort to im-
prove the overall power-quality (PQ) performance. Transient
The regulation assessment outcome is not intended as the sole
indicator in evaluating voltage regulation and regulator con-
waveform data have been used almost exclusively as the only cerns. It is one of many other possible indicators. As an example,
data set to determine and analyze the root causes of PQ prob- problems in voltage regulators can be indicated using unbalance
lems [1] and evaluate equipment performance and predict main- data as well as the number of daily regulator operations.
tenance requirements [2], [3] to mention just a few. This paper also demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed sta-
Unfortunately, voluminous steady-state data collected along- tistical methods by applying them to assess the performance of
side waveform data are yet to be fully exploited. Steady-state feeder voltage regulation. Steady-state data used will be the rms
data, such as rms voltage and current profiles, unbalance voltage profile.
voltage, reactive power (var) flow, and harmonic distortion The proposed control charts method builds upon and expands
data, contain a wealth of information about the equipment that proposed in [9]. Sunderman used the basic control chart to
and overall system health conditions. Instead of relying automate the detection of voltage unbalance. It worked reason-
on signal-processing techniques, statistical process control ably well; however, it produced a number of false positives. This
methods should be used to analyze steady-state data. Statistical is because the upper limit of the control chart beyond which
process control methods have been used in industrial process, voltage unbalanced is deemed to be invalid is absent. In addi-
manufacturing quality controls, and large software development tion, [9] did not statistically analyze the number of samples after
efforts to measure and monitor process variations and stability the detection of a flagged event. In this paper, the so-called beta
[5]–[8]. risk and the average run length curves are developed for that
Statistical process control methods can be applied to appro- purpose.
priate steady-state data sets to help detect abnormal data or trend Two control-chart based methods are developed for assessing
the health of a voltage regulator using its regulation profile. The
Manuscript received August 29, 2006; revised January 22, 2007. Paper no.
first method (Section III) utilizes the control chart theory for
TPWRD-00510-2006. the detection of anomalies in the regulation profile for current
N. Mago is with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Taylor, TX 76574 data. The second method (Section IV) uses run chart analysis
USA.
S. Santoso is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
as the basis for a rule-based algorithm to isolate trends for indi-
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 USA (e-mail: ssan- cating the possibility of a poorly performing voltage regulator.
toso@ieee.org). Section V describes the implementation and applications of the
M. McGranaghan is with EPRI, Knoxville, TN 37932 USA. proposed techniques on two actual rms voltage data. This sec-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. tion also demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed methods.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.905549 Section VI concludes this paper.
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
MAGO et al.: ASSESSMENT OF FEEDER VOLTAGE REGULATION USING STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL METHODS 381

Fig. 2. Theoretical placement of control charts assuming normally distributed

Fig. 1. Actual and normalized-zero-mean versions for the initial 100-h input data.
average voltage data obtained from Substation 1 and Substation 2.

the data, which the primary descriptive data summaries such as

II. STEADY DATA PREPROCESSING
mean, standard deviation, and histogram disregard.
The proposed statistical data analysis uses steady-state rms The variations in a feeder’s voltage can be attributed to a va-
voltage data as input data. Many PQ monitors provide average, riety of causes, some of which may be a part of its normal opera-
minimum, and maximum rms voltage profiles. Each data point tion, or might be constantly present and produce a variation that
in the profile typically represents a 1-, 5-, 10-, or 15-min rms is stable and predictable. Others are either not always present or
value. Data analyzed in this paper are 15-min rms data. not always present to the same extent and produce a variation
RMS voltage data can have different voltage levels. There- that is unstable and unpredictable. The first type is classified as
fore, to maintain uniformity in the analysis, data obtained common causes of variation and the others as special causes of
from various measurements are converted such that every input variation, respectively. The control chart analysis help discern
being processed by the algorithm has the same voltage level. whether the variation in trend is due to a common predictable
For achieving this, a two-step process is used. As a part of cause or some special cause which requires prompt attention.
this method, the raw voltage data are scaled down to a 120-V This unique feature of control chart analysis is accredited to
voltage level and then the mean of the input data is set to zero
the presence of control limits, namely an upper control limit
(i.e., if represents the discrete voltage series), then, the
(UCL) and a lower control limit (LCL). The control limits act
zero-mean voltage series can be obtained by using (1)
as a threshold between the common causes and special causes
for variations in the regulation profile. Along with the control
for
limits, the control charts consist of a centerline, which repre-
where sents the mean of the data.
The control limits are selected such that the probability of a
data point lying beyond the limits due to random causes is very
(1) small. Usually a probability value of 0.001 is chosen since,
in practical implementations, the use of values even slightly
different than this have either made the resulting limits too
In other words, is a normalized zero-mean rms rigid or too relaxed [10]. With the 0.001 probability limit as the
voltage. A two-step process is used since both the residential threshold, there is a possibility that only two in every thousand
distribution is at a 120-V level and voltage regulators operate at data points will exceed either of the control limits due to
the same voltage level as well. Fig. 1 shows the actual voltage random causes. With this being a very small risk, the presence
measured at two different substations and their normalized of such a data point in a control chart indicates an anomaly in
zero-mean rms voltage. Month-long, average voltage readings the behavior of the device responsible for the trend. If the data
from each of the two substations is used for setting up the
are assumed to be normally distributed, the 0.001 probability
threshold voltage limits that indicate normal operation levels
limits lie very close to three times the within sample standard
of the installed voltage regulators. It can be observed in Fig. 1
deviation. Thus, the control limits are sometimes also called the
that the actual data and the normalized data completely overlap
3-sigma limits. Fig. 2 shows a schematic of the placement of
each other, verifying the correctness of the calculations made
using (1). the 0.001 control limits with respect to the center line, assuming
normally distributed data. The assumption that feeder voltage
data are normally distributed is validated empirically for the
III. METHOD 1: CONTROL CHART ANALYSIS two data sets used in this paper in Section V-A.
The first method proposes the use of control charts analysis. There are three elementary types of control charts for nor-
Control charts are a formalized method of collection and presen- mally distributed and continuously measured data; namely
tation of data. These charts preserve the temporal information in X-bar, R-chart, and S-charts. In each chart, the sample means,
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
382 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 1, JANUARY 2008

the sample ranges, and the within sample standard deviations

are plotted in order to control their variability.
Permanently installed PQ monitors at substations provide Lower Control Limit (4c)
continuous monitoring of the voltage on the feeders. Hence
their measurements can be assumed to be continuous and ana- In (4), factors and are both functions of sample size
lyzed using the variable control charts. Since the average and and are independent of the actual voltage data. These were es-
the range of voltage for every fifteen minutes are readily avail- tablished in order to simplify the computational burden in ob-
able through the meters the X-bar and R-charts are preferred taining the control limits. Their values can be obtained from sta-
in the analysis technique proposed in this paper. The following tistical tables in [10].
steps outline the general procedure for constructing the X-bar Once the values of the centerline and control limits are com-
and R control charts. The steps involved in implementation of puted, the R-chart (with values as ordinates and time ab-
a smart-analysis algorithm in order to achieve better accuracy scissa) is plotted along with the centerline and the control limits
in detection of anomalies in long duration voltage variations is and examined for abnormalities.
also described. If it is evident from the chart that the range profile is within
the desired performance specifications (i.e., the majority of the
A. Data values lie within the control limits for range), the X-bar chart
Let each set of average-, maximum- and minimum- rms should be constructed.
voltage with their mean adjusted to zero together belong to If with control limits obtained from (4), most of the values
a single sample . consecutive such lie beyond the control limits, another set of voltage values from a
samples are used for constructing the control charts. Also, it is different time interval should be chosen, and the R-chart should
assumed that the value of average voltage in each sample be reconstructed. It would be helpful to know, during the chosen
corresponds to the mean of data points. Thus, each sample time interval, that the regulation is well within the desired range.
is symbolic of the trend of data values. Similarly, the value Such a selection would ensure that a majority of the values
and in each sample corresponds to the maximum will fall within the control limits. Once such data are achieved,
and minimum voltage in each -point sample. the X-bar chart should be constructed using the within-sample
1) R-chart Construction: Initially, the R-chart is constructed standard deviation . The main motive behind this is to obtain
using the available maximum and minimum values of voltage in correct performance specifications to be held as reference for
each sample. The range value for each sample can be computed assessing future regulation performance.
using 2) X-Bar Chart Construction: The values of the average
voltage of each sample is utilized along with the value of within-
(2) sample standard deviation to plot the X-bar chart. In X-bar
where represents the sample number and is the total number charts, the centerline is denoted as and similar to R-charts,
of samples in the data set. the control limits for the X-bar chart can be computed by using
The centerline of the R-chart is the mean of the range values
of all the samples and is denoted by . The 3-sigma control Control Limits (5)
limits for the R-chart are defined as where is the standard deviation of the sampling distribution
Control Limits (3) of the mean for the subgroups, each of size .
In case of X-bar charts, the standard deviation .
where is the standard deviation of the sampling distribution Thus, the control limits for X-bar charts can be estimated as
of the range for the subgroups, each of size .
This standard deviation value is different from the stan- Centerline
dard deviations which might be computed from the known
values in each subgroup and it helps quantify the variations (6a)
within the subgroups. Thus, making the magnitude of in-
dependent of any special causes of variation and, hence, such Upper Control Limit
variations can be detected using the control chart. In case of
(6b)
R-charts , where is the within-sample standard
deviation and can be computed as . Both and Lower Control Limit
are functions of subgroup size and their exact values can be
found in [11]. Using these, the control limits for the R-chart can (6c)
be thus computed as
where is the average voltage in each sample and is the
sample size.
Centerline (4a) In (6), the factor , such as and is a function of the
sample size and likewise can be obtained by using standard
statistical tables in [10].
The X-bar chart is then constructed with values as ordi-
Upper Control Limit (4b) nates and time abscissa, along with the centerline and the control
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
MAGO et al.: ASSESSMENT OF FEEDER VOLTAGE REGULATION USING STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL METHODS 383

Fig. 4. Average run length curve for the X-bar chart with a sample size varying
from 1 to 10 shown for a variety of delta values.
Fig. 3. Beta risk curve for X-bar chart with sample size varying from 1 to 10
shown for a variety of delta values.

sample data falling within control limits on the very first sample
after an increase in the standard deviation of the trend versus the
limits. This chart is observed for anomalies (i.e., for instances
relative increase in the standard deviation. The ratio of the new
when the sample average lies outside the control limits). The
standard deviation of the trend to the original standard deviation
sample is marked as a flagged event in case lies outside
of the trend is called a shift. The beta risk for X-bar charts is
the control limits.
computed using (7)
If the X-bar chart for a particular data set indicates that the
voltage profile is within the control limits, then these values of
the control limits are chosen as the performance indicators and
all new sample data are added to the existing chart without any
modification to the control limits. Otherwise, a procedure sim-
ilar to the one indicated in Step 2) is adopted until stable control where is the probability of not changing a shift in the
limits are obtained. bar chart immediately after the shift occurs; is the size of the
3) Introducing a New Restriction: Though control limits are changed
shift, ; and is the standard normal cumulative
a realistic boundary between healthy and poor regulation, not original
all excursions beyond the control limits in the profile can be at- density function
tributed to poor voltage regulation. Hence, there is a need to have
more conditions to assess the performance of voltage regulating (7)
devices.
Detecting flagged events on successive samples in the Fig. 3 shows the beta risk curve for X-bar charts as the sample
X-bar chart is a plausible condition for concluding a faulty regu- size varies from 1 to 10. It can be observed from the figure
lator. Such practical behavior is reasonable since, if at any time, that the probability of not detecting a small shift in the standard
a voltage regulator develops a fault, the regulation profile, in deviation of the trend data is very high.
general, should have a trend deviating from the normal. In other The beta risk values calculated using (7) can be utilized to
words, if the voltage regulator becomes faulty, there should be compute the average number of samples required to detect a
more flagged events in the X-bar chart, indicating a variation sudden and persistent shift in the trend of the voltage data. This
in the standard deviation of the trend. This realization leads to quantity is known as the average run length (ARL) and can be
an additional condition, which should be satisfied in assessing estimated as follows:
feeder voltage regulation performance.
4) Implementing the Restriction: To implement the new re- (8)
striction, it is necessary to monitor a certain specific number
of the voltage samples immediately after the detection of Fig. 4 shows the average run length curve for sample sizes 1
a flagged event. The optimum value of is statistically de- to 10, computed using (8). It can be observed that the average
termined using the operating characteristic (OC) curves (also number of samples required for detecting a specific shift in the
known as the beta risk curves) and the average-run length curves standard deviation of the trend decreases as the sample size
(ARL). increases. On average, it takes less than five samples of size
OC curves indicate the risk of not detecting a sudden and to detect a shift of 1.1 in the standard deviation of
persistent shift in the standard deviation of the voltage trend on the trend.
the very first sample after the shift has occurred [10], [12]. These Thus, for the sake of generality and application to any sample
curves are basically a plot of the probability (beta risk) of a size, it would be reasonable to observe ten voltage samples im-
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
384 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 1, JANUARY 2008

mediately succeeding a flagged event (i.e., ). The con-

clusions regarding voltage regulation assessment will then be
based on the general trend. If a statistical majority of the samples
tend to generate flagged events, the feeder voltage regulation
will be considered poor. This method is applied to all phases in-
dividually. When results from one or more phases indicate pos-
sible poor regulation, a comprehensive evaluation (system-wide
and device level) to determine the root cause of poor regulation
should be conducted.

IV. METHOD 2: RUN CHART ANALYSIS

A second technique for assessing feeder voltage regulation

using a run chart analysis of steady-state rms voltage data is
proposed in this section. In particular, it develops an algorithm Fig. 5. Segmented run chart for the average Phase A voltage input data mea-
to quantify the performance of the voltage regulation based on sured at the service entrance of substation 1.
the trend in data points lying beyond the threshold limits. A run
chart is a linear graph of data points plotted in chronological
order (i.e., in the same sequence in which the voltage values
were measured). The uniqueness about the run chart is that these
charts protect the time trend in the data. Thus, it is easier to
understand the variation in the regulation profile and to analyze
the voltage data for patterns which are otherwise not visible.
The following steps outline the voltage regulation assessment
procedure.

A. Plotting the Run Chart

Analogous to the previous control chart analysis, the raw data

for this method are obtained from PQ monitors. The raw average
voltage data obtained from the feeder is preprocessed to set the
mean of the data points to zero and the bandwidth to . Each Fig. 6. Analyzing the voltage regulation profile by segmenting the run chart
processed data point belongs to a sample . consecutive with 20 samples per segment and observing the variations over 38 segments.
such samples are used for plotting the run chart with the mean
of the data forming the centerline.
1) Segmenting the Run Chart and Categorizing the Trend: centerline, the scaled boundary limits of the regulation, and an
In this step, the trend in voltage samples exceeding the band- example of segmenting of the run chart are shown.
width of the voltage regulation is analyzed. Due to the enormity 2) Analyzing the Trend in the Three Categories: Linear
of the data samples available, the run chart is partitioned into graphs visually showing the trend are plotted using the count
segments of samples each. Ideally, the value of should be and mean data in each category (i.e., the following six graphs
empirically chosen. This selection is influenced by factors, such are plotted for each phase):
as total length of data, the sampling rate, the parameter being • number of samples within the boundary limits and their
studied, which is voltage in the case at hand, and practical ex- cumulative mean voltage, versus segment number;
perience. This analysis used here partitions the run charts into • number of samples greater than the upper limit and their
segments of eight samples each. Thus, each segment represents cumulative mean voltage versus segment number;
two hours of voltage data in the voltage profile. Since this is just • number of samples smaller than the lower limit and their
the beginning, it seems reasonable to probe the health of the reg- cumulative mean voltage versus segment number.
ulator every two hours. The samples in each segment are split Fig. 6 shows the previously mentioned graphs for the average
into one of the following three categories: input voltage data at substation 2. The trend in the voltage sam-
1) within the boundary limits; ples in each segment that are beyond the boundary limits is ana-
2) greater than the upper limit; lyzed. Also analogous to Step 2), the complexity of the analysis
3) smaller than the lower limit. is reduced by aggregating the segments to form small clusters
In other words, in each segment, the number of samples and examine each cluster individually.
lying in the three mutually exclusive categories just shown are Analogous to the sample size, selection, the cluster size
recorded. The mean value of voltage in all three categories is should also be empirically set. In general, each cluster rep-
also computed. Fig. 5 shows the run chart constructed from the resents 0.25 mph of the voltage regulation profile. Hence, the
data from each sample measured for the substation 1. The value of should be chosen based on how periodically the
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
MAGO et al.: ASSESSMENT OF FEEDER VOLTAGE REGULATION USING STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL METHODS 385

voltage regulator’s health is probed. Since almost month-long

data are available from substation 1 and substation 2, the
analysis in this paper chose to observe the regulator’s health
on an approximately daily basis . Each cluster is
then examined for the following three quantities, which are
subsequently counted and tabulated:
• number of increasing/ decreasing runs in the cluster, where
a run is defined as consecutive data points lying above
zero. Also the number of data points present in each run
is recorded;
• number of groups in the cluster, where a group is defined
as the set of consecutive data points lying above/ below the
zero value, is recorded; Fig. 7. Distribution of phase A voltage at the substation 1 and substation 2
• maximum/minimum value of the mean voltage in each along with a zero-mean normal distribution curve.
cluster is noted.
The observations should be tabulated and observed. Contin-
then used as a threshold to identify abnormalities in the new
uous occurrence of runs and groups among consecutive clusters
are indicative of a slowly growing abnormality creeping into the voltage data appended to the charts.
voltage regulation. As indicated earlier this method can be used The voltage data of phase A for the initial three days is utilized
to estimate the control limits that indicate the healthy operation
as a standalone method or in conjunction with the first method
based on control chart analysis where this technique can be used levels of the voltage regulator. The centerline for the R-chart is
for analyzing the trend in the voltage samples that lie beyond the computed to be . It is assumed that the power quality
control limits. meter installed at the substation records the average of four
voltage readings per sample stored (i.e., ). The control
limits for the R-chart are thus computed to be
V. EXECUTING THE PROPOSED TECHNIQUES and . The R-chart is plotted and examined for ex-
This section discusses the application of the two methods de- ceptions. It is observed that with the exclusion of a single event,
scribed before to data obtained from substation 1 and substa- all other points lie within the control limits, indicating that the
tion 2 shown in Fig. 1. Month-long data are acquired using PQ voltage regulation is more or less healthy. Thus, the control
monitors installed at a 25-kV system and a 13.8-kV system. limits obtained from the voltage data for the initial few days can
The phase A voltage is used for the analysis in this section. be considered as the desired threshold values and can be utilized
The method is independent of the phase voltage and can be per- for constructing the X-bar chart.
formed using either of the phase voltage data. The data obtained With this conclusion, the within-sample standard deviation
are thus preprocessed to set its mean to zero and analyzed using of the voltage samples obtained in the initial three days is com-
the two proposed methods. puted to be . The control limits for the X-bar chart
In this section, initially the assumption that the voltage are thus computed using (6) as
data are normally distributed is validated. The data obtained
from each substation are subsequently analyzed using both
techniques to assess the quality of the voltage regulation at Fig. 8 shows the X-bar and R-charts constructed for the voltage
each site. data of phase A obtained at the service entrance of substation 1.
The X-bar charts in Fig. 8 are subsequently processed to de-
A. Validating the Use of Control Chart Analysis
tect instances of flagged events in the chart. For each voltage
Control charts analysis is based on the assumption that the sample triggering a flagged event, the immediate ten voltage
data being analyzed are normally distributed. Fig. 7 shows the samples following it are examined . Also, the max-
distribution of the data for both substations. The voltage distri- imum and minimum voltage values in each event are recorded.
bution is almost normal at substation 1 but is slightly skewed in Table I shows the results obtained for the first five flagged events
case of voltage at substation 2, indicating that the voltage pro- detected in the X-bar chart.
file at substation 2 needs to be analyzed further. But since the In Table I, for the flagged event at sample 30, eight of the
shape of distribution almost matches the normal distribution’s succeeding ten samples lie beyond the upper control limit with
bell-shaped curve, the control charts can be used for further de- the maximum average voltage value being 0.6. An inspection of
tailed analysis of the voltage profile. Fig. 8 and Table I indicates that there would be certain flagged
1) Assessing Voltage Regulation With the Data Acquired at instances in which the phase voltage drops out of the control
Substation 1: The phase A voltage captured at substation 1 is limits but tends to rise back to the previous level later on. This
analyzed using the control chart analysis and run charts method. rise/drop can be attributed to variations in the load at the sub-
2) Control Chart Analysis: In this method, the phase voltage station and are not necessarily indicative of deterioration in the
data from the first few days are utilized to determine the control feeder voltage regulation.
limits for healthy operation of the voltage regulator both for Hence, in order to avoid false positives, the magnitude of
R-chart and X-bar chart. These values of the control limits are the phase voltage being reached in the ten successive voltage
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
386 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 1, JANUARY 2008

Fig. 8. X-bar chart (top) and R-chart (bottom) for the phase A voltage data
measured at substation 1.
Fig. 9. Run chart for the average voltage received at phase A at substation 1.

TABLE I
PARTIAL RESULTS OF THE ANALYSIS OF THE X-BARCHART IN FIG. 9 TABLE II
SEGREGATION RESULTS FOR THE FIRST FIVE SEGMENTS OF THE
RUN CHART IN FIG. 10

is analyzed independently by plotting the values in each column

samples should also be observed before the final conclusion is in Table II with respect to the segment number.
reached. In the case at hand, almost all maxima/ minima ob- Fig. 6 is constructed using the partial voltage data acquired
served have reasonable magnitudes except for a particular min- at substation 1. It can be extended to obtain a visual display
imum voltage magnitude of approximately a 51.1 value. This of the entire data acquired at substation 1 and the additional
corresponds to a flagged event detected at sample number 1908. results obtained can be appended to Table II. The graphs in the
But the trend in the voltage regulation profile for the time suc- figure are examined on an almost daily basis, to identify the
ceeding the event tends to be more or less normal. Hence, the working condition of the voltage regulator. This is implemented
exception caused, can be safely attributed to the occurrence of a by examining the entire data in small clusters, each consisting
fault in any one of the three phases carrying the voltage to sub- of 14 segments.
station 1. Thus, for the data acquired from substation 1, a total of 24
3) Run Chart Analysis: The same one-month-long phase clusters are examined to identify the number of increasing/de-
voltage acquired at the substation 1 is processed using the creasing runs and groups above or below zero that are present
second algorithm based on run chart analysis as well. Here, in the voltage regulation profile. The results obtained from the
the bandwidth of the voltage regulator forms the threshold analysis of the trend in the voltage regulation profile are tabu-
limits. It is assumed that the voltage regulating equipment at lated and observed. Partial results for the analysis of the data
the substation has a bandwidth setting of 2 V, making the scaled points lying below the lower limit are tabulated in Table III.
limits for a zero mean data as and . Fig. 9 shows the run It can be observed that except for cluster 16, the other clusters
chart plot for the zero mean adjusted phase A voltage data at contain very few or no runs/groups at all. This indicates that
substation 1. although there is an instance of violation in the voltage profile,
The run chart in Fig. 9 is segmented such that there are eight the probability of this occurring due to the development of a
samples per segment. The samples in each segment are segre- fault in the voltage regulator is very minor. Hence, this particular
gated into the three mutually independent categories, depending instance can be attributed to the occurrence of a short circuit in
on their voltage magnitudes, namely: 1) within the boundary some feeder in the substation and is not a voltage regulation-
limits (BL); 2) greater than the upper limit (UL); and 3) lower related problem.
than the lower limit (LL). For the purpose of illustration, Table II
shows the partial segregation results for the first five segments. B. Assessing Voltage Regulation With the Data Acquired at
As can be noticed in the segment S3, there is one sample that Substation 2
is greater than the UL and the other seven samples lie with the Month-long voltage data acquired at substation 2 are also an-
limits and have a mean value of 0.65. The trend in each category alyzed using both of the proposed techniques.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
MAGO et al.: ASSESSMENT OF FEEDER VOLTAGE REGULATION USING STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL METHODS 387

TABLE III TABLE IV

RESULTS OBTAINED WHEN ANALYZING THE TREND IN THE VOLTAGE PARTIAL RESULTS OF THE ANALYSIS OF THE
POINTS LYING BELOW THE LOWER LIMIT X-BAR CHART IN FIG. 12

Fig. 11. Run chart for the average voltage received at phase A measured at
substation 2.

Fig. 10. X-bar chart (top) and R-chart (bottom) for the phase A voltage data 2) Run Chart Analysis: Analogous to the previous analysis
measured at substation 2. of voltage data acquired at substation 1, voltage data from sub-
station 2 are also analyzed using the technique based on the run
chart analysis. The threshold limits are determined assuming the
1) Control Chart Analysis: The zero mean adjusted voltage bandwidth of the installed voltage regulating equipment to be 2
data from the first few days are utilized to establish the control V. Fig. 12 shows the run chart constructed using the month-long
limits of the voltage data. The voltage data for the first three days voltage data obtained at the service entrance for substation 2. A
are analyzed assuming that the average values obtained from the glance at Fig. 11 indicated that there are huge violations of the
installed PQ meter correspond to the mean of four voltage sam- voltage bandwidth at substation 2. Nevertheless, the proposed
ples (i.e., ) to obtain the control limits for the R-chart as analysis is implemented further to verify this.
and , with the centerline located at The run chart in Fig. 11 is segmented such that there are
. The R-chart is subsequently plotted and observed eight samples per segment. The voltage samples in each seg-
for exceptions which, in this case, looked reasonable enough to ment are segregated into three categories depending on whether
be used for further studies. Using these as the nominal values the voltage sample lies within the boundary limits or beyond.
for indicating the health of the installed voltage regulator, the The trend in each of the three categories is analyzed for anoma-
standard deviation is computed to have a value of 0.8113. lies. Graphs similar to Fig. 6 can be plotted and examined in
The control limits for the X-bar chart are computed using (6) as, small clusters to identify the number of runs and continuous
and . The X-bar chart and groups lying beyond the boundary limits in each cluster. Table V
R-charts in Fig. 10 are thus constructed from the month-long shows the partial results obtained for the analysis of the trend in
voltage data obtained from substation 2. the clusters for the voltage points lying beyond the upper limit.
The X-bar chart in Fig. 10 is processed for the detection of The results in Table V verify that a substantial number of ex-
flagged events. Table IV shows partial results corresponding to cursions lies beyond the boundary limits as predicted by visual
voltage samples on the fourth day of measurement. It can be observation of Fig. 11. A large part of the segments in all of
observed both in Fig. 10 and the results in Table IV that the the clusters lies beyond the upper limit with the mean voltage
voltages at the substation trigger many of the flagged events in the range of almost twice the boundary limits. This clearly
with voltage values that are approximately four times larger than indicates a continuous deviation in the voltage profile. The per-
the control limits. This is indicative of a strong deviation in the sistent trend deviation over a one-month period is indicative of
trend of the voltage across the feeder. Such deviation in the trend possible regulator problems, changes in load patterns that re-
cannot be attributed to the variation in the load alone and can quire adjustments of regulator settings, and other issues. The
be indicative of a flawed voltage regulation at the feeder in the statistical trend analysis results can be used to help engineers
substation as well. detect possible abnormal developments in the system.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
388 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 1, JANUARY 2008

TABLE V [5] N. Eickelmann and A. Anant, “Statistical process control: What you
RESULTS OBTAINED WHEN ANALYZING THE TREND IN don’t measure can hurt you!,” IEEE Softw., vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 49–51,
THE VOLTAGE POINTS LYING ABOVE THE UPPER LIMIT Jan./Feb. 2003.
[6] B. J. Hoopes and K. P. Triantis, “Efficiency performance, control
charts, and process improvement: Complementary measurement and
evaluation,” IEEE Trans. Eng. Manag., vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 239–253,
May 2001.
[7] P. Jalote and A. Saxena, “Optimum control limits for employing sta-
tistical process control in software process,” IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng.,
vol. 28, no. 12, pp. 1126–1134, Dec. 2002.
[8] W. Zhang and T. Yu, “Control charts and process capability,” in Proc.
IEEE Int. Conf. Manag. Innovation Technol., 2000, vol. 2, pp. 904–909.
[9] W. Sunderman, “Automated detection of voltage unbalance con-
ditions,” presented at the Elect. Power Res. Inst. Power Quality
Assurance Conf., Long Island, NY, May 2004.
[10] A. J. Duncan, Quality Control And Industrial Statistics. Homewood,
IL: R. D. Irwin, Inc., 1974.
[11] Manual on Presentation of Data and Control Chart Analysis, 7th ed.
West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int., 2002.
VI. SUMMARY [12] D. Drain, Statistical Methods For Industrial Process Control, 1st ed.
London, U.K.: Chapman & Hall, 1997.
This paper is motivated by the lack of utilization of volu-
minous steady-state PQ data collected alongside the transient Nitika V. Mago received the B.E. and M.S.E. degrees in electrical and computer
waveform data. In this paper, we demonstrated that trend engineering from Mumbai University’s Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute
(VJTI), Mumbai, India, in 2005 and the M.S.E. degree from the University of
analysis can be accomplished using statistical process control Texas at Austin in 2007.
methods. In particular, we developed novel procedures based Currently, she is with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Taylor, TX.
on statistical process control methods to analyze steady-state Her research interests include the development of smart algorithms for using raw
steady-state data for predictive operation and maintenance of power equipment,
rms voltage data. We confirmed their efficacies and their uti- application of distributed computing for developing time-efficient models for
lization in assessing feeder voltage regulation. We showed that nodal power system analysis, power systems quality and harmonics, and wind
both the data and methods can be used to indicate possible energy systems.
poor regulation, regulator problems, or other related problems.
The regulation assessment outcome is not intended as the sole
indicator; rather it is one of many other possible indicators. The Surya Santoso (M’96–SM’02) received the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in elec-
trend analysis methods presented before can provide engineers trical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994
and 1996, respectively.
with an insight about the steadiness of the long-term data and He rejoined the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor in
to detect any abnormal behavior that might unfold. 2003. Prior to joining the University of Texas, he was a Consulting Engineer
with Electrotek Concepts, Inc., Knoxville, TN, for seven years. His research in-
terests include the development of intelligent systems for analyzing raw power-
REFERENCES quality measurement data, power system modeling and studies, and wind power.
[1] T. K. Abdel-Galil, E. El-Saadany, A. M. Youssef, and M. M. A. Salama, He coauthored Electric Power Systems Quality (McGraw-Hill, 2002).
“Disturbance classification using hidden Markov models and vector
quantization,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 2129–2135,
Jul. 2005.
[2] S. R. McCormick, K. Hur, S. Santoso, A. Maitra, and A. Sundaram, Mark F. McGranaghan (M’77–SM’03) is Associate Vice President with
“Capacitor bank predictive maintenance and problem identification EPRI, Knoxville, TN. He coordinates a wide range of services offered to
using conventional power quality monitoring systems,” in Proc. IEEE electric utilities and critical industrial facilities throughout the world. These
Power Eng. Soc. General Meeting, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 1846–1850. services include research projects, seminars, monitoring services, power
[3] S. Santoso, J. D. Lamoree, and M. F. McGranaghan, “Signature anal- systems analysis projects, performance benchmarking, testing services, failure
ysis to track capacitor switching performance,” in Proc. IEEE Power analysis, and designing solutions for system performance improvement. His
Eng. Soc. Transmission Distribution Conf. Expo., 2001, vol. 21, pp. technical background is in the area of power system modeling and analysis.
259–263. He is an expert in the areas of harmonic analysis, transient analysis, reliability,
[4] S. Santoso, R. C. Dugan, J. D. Lamoree, and A. Sundaram, “Distance power quality improvement, and power systems monitoring applications. He
estimation technique for single line-to-ground faults in a radial distri- has written many papers.
bution system,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. Winter Meeting, 2000, Mr. McGranaghan is active in IEEE and IEC standards development, and has
vol. 4, pp. 2551–2555. taught power system workshops and seminars throughout the world.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Kasetsart University provided by UniNet. Downloaded on October 12,2023 at 08:34:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.