Power Quality Event Identification Using Higher-Order Statistics and Neural Classifiers

This paper deals with power-quality (PQ) event detection, classification and characterization using higher-order sliding cumulants to examine the signals. Their maxima and minima are the main features, and the classification strategy is based in competitive layers. Concretely, we concentrate on the task of differentiating two types of transients (short duration and long duration). By measuring the fourth-order central cumulants’ maxima and minima, we build the two-dimensional feature measured vector. Cumulants are calculated over high-pass digitally filtered signals, to avoid the low-frequency 50-Hz signal. We have observed that the minima and maxima measurements produce clusters in the feature space for 4th-order cumulants; third-order cumulants are not capable of differentiate these two very similar PQ events. The experience aims to set the foundations of an automatic procedure for PQ event detection.