Resumo:
The increased sensitivity of equipment to electrical disturbances and the spread of nonlinear
loads are some of the factors that reinforce the importance of Power quality (PQ).
Poor power quality can lead to equipment damage, interruptions and other consequences
causing monetary losses and possible legal actions. Therefore, monitoring the PQ status
in power grid is a strategic factor, while it allows the identification of critical areas. The
different types of meters, the massive amount of data and the many PQ indices defined
by PRODIST (Brazilian standard for power distribution) make the PQ management a
difficult task to be accomplished efficiently without an automatic power quality management
system (PQMS). In this concern, this work presents a review on the projects
that have been developed around the world regarding power quality data monitoring and
management. This work also presents a proposal for PQMS addressing data acquisition,
PQ indices calculation algorithm and a human machine interface for displaying results
in a user-friendly format. Considering that the PQ indices take at least a week to be
determined, the process of testing and validating the developed system would be timeconsuming
and inefficient if it were performed using real measurement data. Hence, this
work proposes and applies an efficient methodology for the PQMS validation using a
PQ test bench in order to test all the software functions in an optimized way. The challenges
encountered and the results obtained during the PQMS validation process are also
presented and discussed.
