EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 
Volume 2007 (2007), Article ID 95328, 12 pages
doi:10.1155/2007/95328
Research Article

On the Empirical Estimation of Utility Distribution Damping Parameters Using Power Quality Waveform Data

Kyeon Hur,1 Surya Santoso,1 and Irene Y. H. Gu2

 1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin 78712, TX, USA
2Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg 412 96, Sweden
Received 30 April 2006; Revised 18 December 2006; Accepted 24 December 2006

Recommended by M. Reza Iravani

Abstract

This paper describes an efficient yet accurate methodology for estimating system damping. The proposed technique is based on linear dynamic system theory and the Hilbert damping analysis. The proposed technique requires capacitor switching waveforms only. The detected envelope of the intrinsic transient portion of the voltage waveform after capacitor bank energizing and its decay rate along with the damped resonant frequency are used to quantify effective X/R ratio of a system. Thus, the proposed method provides complete knowledge of system impedance characteristics. The estimated system damping can also be used to evaluate the system vulnerability to various PQ disturbances, particularly resonance phenomena, so that a utility may take preventive measures and improve PQ of the system.