Software development of a voltage sag analysis tool for power quality study

Abstract

Voltage sags are recognized as the most important power quality problem, which may cause sensitive equipments to trip, thus causing a major economic impact. Voltage sag analysis is usually , required to determine the voltage sag characteristics, the likelihood of a voltage sag occurrence and areas of vulnerability in power distribution systems. This paper presents a software development of a voltage sag analysis tool using the PSS engine application program interface library by Power Technologies Incorporation, Microsoft C++ and Visual BASIC. The objective is to develop a dedicated software for voltage sag analysis which automates the process of creating sliding nodes and fault analysis which is not available in the existing commercial power system analysis packages. An important feature included in the program is the short circuit analysis which incorporates multiple sliding faults analysis. Results are presented in tabular form and stored in exchangeable file format. The program has been tested on a real power distribution network and the results are satisfactory.