IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO.
2, APRIL 2002
Expert System for Classification and Analysis of
Power System Events
Emmanouil Styvaktakis, Math H. J. Bollen, Senior Member, IEEE, and Irene Y. H. Gu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents an expert system that is able to
classify different types of power system events to the underlying
causes (i.e., events) and offer useful information in terms of
power quality. The expert system uses the voltage waveforms and
distinguishes the different types of voltage dips (fault-induced,
transformer saturation, induction motor starting) as well as
interruptions (nonfault, fault-induced). A method for event-based
classification is used, where a segmentation algorithm is first
applied to divide waveforms into several possible events. The
expert system is tested using real measurements and the results
show that the system enables fast and accurate analysis of data
from power quality monitors.
Index Terms—Expert systems, Kalman filtering, power quality,
power system monitoring, voltage dips (sags).
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE INCREASED requirements on supervision, control,
and performance in modern power systems make power
quality monitoring a common practice for utilities. With the
growth of the number of monitors installed in the system, the
amount of data collected is growing, making individual inspec-
tion of all the waveshapes no longer an option. New tools are
required to extract all relevant information from the recordings
in an automatic way. Such automatic analysis tools can be ap-
plied to large existing databases, but can also be implemented
in a monitor. Several approaches for automatic classification of
power system disturbances have been proposed in a number of
papers [1], [2]. These systems classify recordings from power
quality monitoring in terms of disturbances [1] or in terms of
underlying events [2].
This paper presents an expert system for the classification
and analysis of a number of power system events in terms of
the underlying causes. The common characteristic of all the
events is that they present a significant variation in voltage.
These are voltage dips and interruptions. The classification
scheme is based on identifying and characterizing the different
stages of voltage during an event. A segmentation scheme is
proposed for this purpose.
The paper is organized as follows. First, the different types of
power system events (considered by the expert system) are pre-
sented. The structure and the most important parts of the expert
Manuscript received June 29, 2001. This work was supported by the Swedish
Energy Authority, Elforsk, ABB Corporate Research, and ABB Automation
Products.
E. Styvaktakis and I. Y. H. Gu are with the Department of Signals and Sys-
tems, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
M. H. J. Bollen is with the Department of Electric Power Engineering,
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8977(02)02746-2.
0885–8977/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE
423
system are described. Special attention is given to the segmenta-
tion scheme. The expert system is tested using recordings from
a medium voltage network (33, 11, and 6.6 kV) obtained over a
two-month period. The results are presented and discussed.
II. BACKGROUND
The voltage events that are considered by the expert system
can be divided into the following classes: fault-induced events,
transformer events, induction motor events, interruptions, and
step-change events. The first three classes and their character-
istics are presented in [3]. Their common feature is that they
cause a temporary decrease in voltage magnitude. Classifica-
tion is possible based on the following characteristics of voltage
magnitude.
• The way the fundamental component recovers back to
normal: fault-induced events are rectangular dips due to
protection operation. Transformer and motor dips are non-
rectangular; voltage recovers gradually.
• The symmetry between the phases: transformer saturation
events are asymmetrical dips (different degree of satura-
tion for each phase) and motor events are symmetrical dips
(balanced load).
• The harmonic contents: transformer events present tempo-
rary high harmonic distortion due to saturation.
Fault-induced dips might present different levels of mag-
nitude before voltage returns back to normal. For multistage
events, it must be determined whether the change in the
magnitude of the dip is due to a system change or a fault type
change. Based on the voltage dip characterization method in
[4], voltage dips can be classified into four types, according to
the fault that causes them. If during the dip the voltage dip type
and the dip magnitude change, this is due to a change in the
fault type. If the magnitude changes but the voltage dip type
remains the same, then the change is due to a change in the
system as protection tries to clear the fault.
The system also considers interruptions and distinguishes be-
tween fault and nonfault interruptions. Nonfault interruptions
could take place, for example, due to manual switching. Fi-
nally, the expert system has an output for recordings that present
only a step change in voltage magnitude (load switching or
voltage control related operations) and an output for energizing
from zero. Summarizing, the system can classify the following
events:
1) energizing;
2) nonfault interruption;
3) fault interruption;
424 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, APRIL 2002

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

(g) (h)

(i)

Fig. 1. Fundamental voltage magnitude and segmentation results (shadowed parts) for (a) energizing, (b) nonfault interruption, (c) fault interruption,
(d) transformer saturation, (e) induction motor starting, (f) step change, (g) transformer saturation followed by protection, (h) single stage dip due to fault, and
(i) multistage dip due to fault.

4) transformer saturation;
5) induction motor starting;
6) step change;
7) transformer saturation followed by protection;
8) single stage dip due to fault;
9) multistage dip due to fault.
III. SEGMENTATION OF VOLTAGE WAVEFORMS
The classification scheme presented in this paper is based
on identifying and characterizing the different stages of voltage
during an event. All the above mentioned events are associated
with at least one sudden change in the voltage magnitude and
these changes define the stages in the recording. To find the time
indices where the fundamental magnitude changes a change de-
tection scheme is employed. The method is described in detail
in [5]. It can be summarized as it is in the following.
The change detection scheme is based on monitoring how
well the measurement data fit a model that consists of the fun-
damental frequency component and a certain number of har-
monics. A detection index is obtained using the residuals of
three Kalman filters (one for each phase). The recordings are
split into event segments (where the detection index is low) and
transition segments (where the detection index is high). The
Kalman filters are not only used to obtain the detection index
for the purpose of segmentation but also for obtaining the fun-
damental frequency magnitude and the harmonics of the voltage
waveforms. The order of the filters is set to 20 to accommodate
the harmonics that are caused by events like transformer satura-
tion or arcing.
It is common that there are more than one of the above-men-
tioned events in one single recording. Therefore, the parts of the
signal associated with different events must be found and ana-
lyzed separately. For this purpose, the expert system separates
the recording into groups of segments that start and end with
segments for which all the phases have normal voltage (above
0.95 pu) or zero voltage (interruption).
For events that present two changes close in time (for ex-
ample, fuse-cleared faults), the detection index increases due
to the first change but does not decay adequately before the in-
crease due to the second change. Therefore, the two changes
cannot be resolved. To overcome this problem, a search is done
to find parts of the voltage signals where the estimated mag-
nitude presents low standard deviation for at least a half-cycle.
The magnitude of a Kalman filter of order 1 is used for this pur-
pose in order to improve the time properties of the magnitude
estimation [6]. The search is done for transition segments that
present a voltage dip of magnitude lower than 0.90 pu.
Fig. 1 shows examples of the fundamental voltage magni-
tude and the segmentation results for all the cases considered
STYVAKTAKIS et al.: EXPERT SYSTEM FOR CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF POWER SYSTEM EVENTS
Fig. 2. Structure of the expert system (flow chart).
by the expert system. The magnitudes of all three phases
are given. The segmentation procedure divides the voltage
waveforms into parts with well-defined characteristics. Even in
the case of events that present high harmonic distortion likesss
stransformer saturation [Fig. 1(d)] and transformer saturation
followed by protection operation [Fig. 1(g)], the different
stages are revealed.
IV. STRUCTURE OF THE EXPERT SYSTEM
A. Strategy
The structure of the expert system is shown in Fig. 2. The
system analyzes recordings that present either a voltage dip
lower than 0.95 pu or an overvoltage higher than 1.05 pu. For
these recordings, the segmentation algorithm is applied. If
more than one event exists in the recording, the classification
procedure is repeated as many times as the number of these
events (ne), each time using the corresponding parts of the
measurement.
Measurements that can be classified using the system data
(protection time settings and scheduled switching operations)
are transferred directly to the further analysis modules. An ex-
ample is given in Section VII. The classification module clas-
sifies the rest of the measurements. The classification proce-
425
dure terminates when all the events within the recording are
classified. If no segments are found initially and the measure-
ment does not present a dip, then the segmentation algorithm is
applied again with a lower threshold. Only the step change is
checked in this case.
B. Classification Module
The possible options for an event are checked according
to whether the recording contains zero values or according
to the number of event segments. The procedure ends when
the event matches with the characteristics of one of the events
in the knowledge base of the expert system. The modules
corresponding to the events are called in the following order.
a) If the recording contains zero voltage values: energizing,
fault, interruption, and nonfault interruption.
b) If the number of event segments is two: transformer satu-
ration, induction motor starting, and step change.
c) If the number of event segments is three: transformer satu-
ration and protection, single stage voltage dip due to fault.
d) If the number of event segments is higher than three: mul-
tistage voltage dip due to fault.
C. Further Analysis Module
The further analysis modules extract information from the
recordings like the voltage dip type [4] (in case of single
stage or multistage dips due to fault), the dip duration, and
the overvoltages that might be present as well as their cause.
Section VI presents the different cases of overvoltages that the
expert system considers.
V. RULES
Next, the rules of the classification module are given for each
event.
1) Energizing: The recording consists of two event segments.
The first corresponds to zero voltage for all phases and the
second one to normal voltage.
2) Fault Interruption: The recording consists of three or more
event segments. The last event segment corresponds to zero
voltage for all the phases. The magnitude of the middle event
segments of at least one of the three phases is below the 0.95 pu
threshold and above 0.10 pu. The first transition segment corre-
sponds to fault initiation and the last transition segment to fault
clearing. Event segments of magnitude below 0.10 pu are not
considered. Interruption might cause transformer saturation. In
this case, voltage waveforms are very distorted and the results
of the segmentation scheme are not reliable. An example of this
phenomenon is given in Section VI.
3) Non-Fault Interruption: The recording consists of two or
more event segments from which the last one corresponds to
zero voltage magnitude for all the phases. None of the middle
event segments has magnitude between 0.95 pu and 0.10 pu (for
the same reason as in the case of fault interruption).
4) Transformer Saturation: The recording consists of two
event segments. The second event segment corresponds to a
voltage drop that finally recovers for at least one phase. The
following conditions must be fulfilled.
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Fig. 3. Voltage waveforms of (a) voltage swell due to fault, (b) overvoltage due
to fuse blowing, (c) overvoltage during line de-energizing due to transformer
saturation, (d) overvoltage during line de-energizing due to current chopping,
(e) harmonic overvoltage due to transformer saturation, and (f) overvoltage due
to capacitor switching.
a) The second event segment (voltage recovery) should have
a gradual increasing magnitude with upwards convex.
Points are taken from the estimated magnitude every
one cycle. The increase between two consecutive points
(first derivative) should not exceed a 0.05 pu threshold
(gradual increase) and the calculated second derivative
should be negative.
b) The estimated magnitude of the second event segment
using a Kalman filter of order 1 varies significantly
[6]. The difference between the maximum and min-
imum values of this magnitude every one cycle should
exceed a threshold which is set as a percentage of the
corresponding magnitude obtained using the high order
Kalman filter.
c) The second event segment presents temporary harmonic
distortion. The sum of the first nine harmonics divided by
the magnitude of the fundamental should be higher than a
certain threshold for a number of cycles. The settings are
obtained after analyzing a large number of measurements.
d) The initial drop of voltage is not the same for all the
phases.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 17, NO. 2, APRIL 2002
5) Induction Motor Starting: The recording consists of two
event segments. The second event segment corresponds to a
voltage drop that gradually recovers for all the phases. The ini-
tial drop of voltage is the same for all the phases. Points are taken
from the estimated magnitude every one cycle and the symmetry
between the phases is also checked using these points.
6) Step Change: The recording consists of two event seg-
ments. The transition segment is not a voltage dip for any of
the phases. The estimated magnitude of the event segments have
low deviation. The second event segment has either reduced or
increased magnitude compared to the first segment. The sign of
the change is the same for all the phases.
7) Transformer Saturation and Protection Operation: The
recording consists of three event segments where the middle
event segment presents a voltage dip for at least one phase. The
first two event segments have the characteristics of transformer
saturation as described in 4). The second transition segment cor-
responds to protection operation and has increasing magnitude.
8) Single Stage Voltage Dip Due to Fault: The recording con-
sists of three event segments. The magnitude of the middle event
segment of at least one of the three phases is below the 0.95 pu
threshold. The first transition segment (fault initiation) of this
phase has decaying magnitude and the second transition seg-
ment (fault clearing) has increasing magnitude.
9) Multistage Voltage Dip Due to Fault: The recording con-
sists of more than three event segments. The magnitude of the
middle event segments of at least one of the three phases is
below the 0.95 pu threshold. The first transition segment (fault
initiation) of this phase has decaying magnitude and the last
transition segment (fault clearing) has increasing magnitude.
The number of stages is counted and the voltage dip type is
found. If two consecutive stages have the same voltage dip type,
then the stage change is due to a change in the system while
clearing the fault. If not, the change is due to a change in the fault
type (e.g., evolving faults: from single phase to double phase
and/or to three phase faults).
VI. FURTHER ANALYSIS OF OVERVOLTAGES
The analysis of the measurements in terms of the overvoltages
is based on the results of the segmentation and the classification.
Overvoltages are detected in the different segments of the mea-
surement and the following cases are recognized as shown in
Fig. 3.
1) Faults and Fault Clearing: Fault initiation might cause
transient overvoltage due to travelling waves that propagate
in the system [7]. Single phase faults in nongrounded systems
cause sustained overvoltages (swells) that last until the fault is
cleared [Fig. 3(a)]. Fault clearing might also cause transient
overvoltages [7]. A special case is the overvoltage due to fuse
clearing [Fig. 3(b)] [8].
2) Interruption: Two types of overvoltages were observed
in the analyzed measurements: transformer saturation and cur-
rent-chopping transients as described in [9]. In the first case,
it results in a square-shape diminishing voltage waveform that
lasts a few cycles [Fig. 3(c)]. In the second case, oscillatory tran-
sients are produced [Fig. 3(d)]. Distinction between these two
cases is possible using the harmonic contents of the switching
STYVAKTAKIS et al.: EXPERT SYSTEM FOR CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF POWER SYSTEM EVENTS
TABLE I
RESULTS OBTAINED USING THE EXPERT SYSTEM
transient: in the case of transformer saturation, the dominant
harmonic is the second or the fourth.
3) Transformer Saturation: Overvoltage might occur during
saturation [Fig. 3(e)] [10]. Due to the nature of the phenomenon
(half-cycle variation within one cycle), the estimated magnitude
is significantly lower than the maximum value of the voltage
waveform.
4) Energizing: Travelling waves are initiated by the switching
of a line that could cause transient overvoltages [7].
5) Step Change: Overvoltages that are related with a stepwise
change in the voltage are due to load, capacitor, reactor, or line
switching [9]. A typical case of such an overvoltage is due to
capacitor energizing. In this case, oscillatory transients are pro-
duced of significant magnitude [Fig. 3(f)].
VII. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
A. Application of the Expert System
The system has been used to analyze measurements from
a medium voltage network [11]. The measurements were ob-
tained in a two-month period and the monitors are triggered
by current or voltage disturbances. As mentioned already, only
measurements which present a voltage dip lower than 0.95 pu or
an overvoltage higher than 1.05 pu are considered by the expert
system.
The classification and the analysis results are given in Table I.
Only 3% of the recordings could not be classified by the system.
427
These recordings (grouped as nonclassified) are either voltage
dips where no stage is found or overvoltages that do not cause
a step change in the fundamental voltage.
Fault-induced events (single stage dips, multistage dips, fault
interruptions) are 60% of the total recordings. Multistage dips
are 18% of the fault-induced events. Transformer saturation
events are 13% of the data. The group transformer satura-
tion-reclosure is obtained by using system information: these
events are nonrectangular voltage dips that take place within a
certain time (10 s) after a fault clearing operation. They are due
to reclosing after circuit breaker opening in the occasion of a
fault.
B. Thresholds
Two groups of thresholds are used by the expert system. The
first group of thresholds is utilized by the segmentation scheme
(see [5] for more details). The selection of these thresholds is a
trade-off between sensitivity and false alarms. The setting was
done after analyzing a large number of data. The tests that were
presented above showed that the performance of the system is
limited in a few cases where step changes (lower than 0.05 pu)
in the voltage magnitude were not captured by the segmenta-
tion algorithm. These small steps are usually due to protection
operation. Therefore, multistage events might be classified as
single stage and protection operation after transformer satura-
tion might not be detected.
Additionally, changes in the voltage magnitude which are
close in time might not be detected as mentioned already in Sec-
tion III. This might be the case for faults that are cleared by fuse
blowing. In these cases, classification of the recordings is not
possible.
The second group of thresholds are used by the expert system
for the characterization of the segments of the recordings. The
setting of these thresholds is important for the identification of
transformer events. In this case, the effect of the thresholds is re-
duced by using four different features for classification. The cor-
responding thresholds were set after analyzing a large number
of data. Other events might present some of the characteristics
of transformer saturation as defined by these thresholds. How-
ever, the probability of all four characteristics being present in
an event other than transformer saturation is low. This was con-
firmed by the tests.
Finally, it is important to realize that the classification proce-
dure requires that all the different stages of the event are cap-
tured by the monitor. If, for example, the monitor does not cap-
ture the voltage recovery after fault clearing, then classification
is not possible.
VIII. CONCLUSION
This paper presents an expert system for automatic clas-
sification of power quality recordings. The main objective
of the system is to distinguish between the different types of
power system events according to their causes. The expert
system considers events that present a considerable change in
voltage. These events are mainly voltage dips (fault-induced,
transformer saturation, and induction motor starting dips) and
interruptions (fault and nonfault).
428
The classification procedure is based on segmenting the
voltage waveforms in points of sudden changes in the fun-
damental magnitude. Based on the segmentation results,
a set of classification modules is utilized to classify the
event. Classification is based on features extracted from the
voltage waveforms. The magnitude, its characteristics, and
the harmonic contents of the voltage waveforms are the most
important features.
The system is used to analyze measurements from a medium
voltage network and the results are presented. The system suc-
cessfully classifies the largest part of the recordings. The only
problems that are found are related with either the failure in
detecting very small changes in the voltage magnitude or the
time resolution problems of the magnitude estimation and the
detection.
The expert system enables fast and accurate analysis of large
databases and classification of the recordings in terms of the
origin. Event classification (instead of disturbance classifica-
tion) offers the means for better understanding and description
of the operation of the system in terms of power quality. The
part of the expert system for the analysis of overvoltages shows
how the system can be used to obtain more detailed statistics
about the recordings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Scottish Power for kindly offering
the measurements that were presented in this paper.
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Emmanouil Styvaktakis received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering
from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, and the
M.Sc. degree in electrical power engineering from the University of Manchester
Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester, U.K., in 1995 and
1996, respectively. Currently, he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in signals and
systems at Chalmers University of Technology (CUT), Gothenburg, Sweden.
He is currently a Research Assistant in the Department of Signals and Systems
at CUT. His research interests include signal processing applications in power
systems and power quality.
Math H. J. Bollen (M’93–SM’96) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from
Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in
1985 and 1989, respectively.
Currently, he is a Professor in electric power systems in the Department
of Electric Power Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology (CUT),
Gothenburg, Sweden. Before joining CUT in 1996, he was a Research
Associate at EUT from 1989 to 1993, and a Lecturer at the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester, U.K.,
between 1993 and 1996. His research interests cover various aspects of power
quality and reliability. He has published a number of fundamental papers on
voltage dip analysis and a textbook on power quality.
Dr. Bollen is active in several IEEE working groups on power quality.
Irene Y. H. Gu (M’94) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in
1992.
She is an Associate Professor in digital signal and image processing at
Chalmers University of Technology (CUT), Gothenburg, Sweden. She was
a Research Fellow at Philips Research Institute IPO (NL), Eindhoven, The
Netherlands, and Staffordshire University, Staffordshire, U.K., and a Lecturer
at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, U.K., from 1992 to 1996.
Her current research interests include time-frequency signal analysis, image
processing, and object recognition.
Dr. Gu is an Associate Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN,
AND CYBERNETICS.