Classification of power quality combined disturbances based on phase space reconstruction and support vector machines

Power Quality (PQ) combined disturbances become common along with ubiquity of voltage flickers and harmonics. This paper presents a novel approach to classify the different patterns of PQ combined disturbances. The classification system consists of two parts, namely the feature extraction and the automatic recognition. In the feature extraction stage, Phase Space Reconstruction (PSR), a time series analysis tool, is utilized to construct disturbance signal trajectories. For these trajectories, several indices are proposed to form the feature vectors. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are then implemented to recognize the different patterns and to evaluate the efficiencies. The types of disturbances discussed include a combination of short-term disturbances (voltage sags, swells) and long-term disturbances (flickers, harmonics), as well as their homologous single ones. The feasibilities of the proposed approach are verified by simulation with thousands of PQ events. Comparison studies based on Wavelet Transform (WT) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are also reported to show its advantages.