Design of a Multi-Complex Disturbance Generator Using Virtual Instrumentation for Power Quality Monitoring Research

The reliability and feasibility of power quality disturbance (PQD) classification methods pivot their performance in a real-world electrical environment. This demands an instrument that can generate real-time PQD voltage signals for investigating the performance of a PQD detection algorithm in practical scenarios. This research presents a PQD generator capable of generating fifteen real-time disturbance events using mathematical models specified by the IEEE standard for monitoring Power Quality (PQ). The proposed design is based on the concept of virtual instrumentation, comprising two parts: the first one is LabVIEW software platform for defining the disturbance parameters and synthesizing user-defined simulated PQD signal, and the second one is MyDAQ a data acquisition card from National Instruments (NI)) for real-time voltage signal generation. The virtual instrument (VI) designed in LabVIEW provides a unique option of inducing real-world electrical conditions like Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and harmonic distortion to PQD events in real-time. The reliability of the proposed instrument is evaluated by measuring the uncertainty in voltage and frequency of the generated PQD waveforms in accordance with the instructions provided by ISO-guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement.