VESPQ: Visual Event System for Power Quality

A new methodology for visualizing power quality (PQ) events in three-phase circuits is presented. It employs an Euclidean vector space to represent 4D information embedded in a 3D point-cloud-like curve in time domain. We exploit the recently developed concept of Cyclic Histograms in single-phase systems by extending and modifying it to multi-phase power systems. Triplets of voltages (line-to-line or line-to-neutral) are used as coordinates of points that are assigned to specific regions in space (voxels). Over time, a counter for each voxel is incremented whenever the discrete trajectory transits the voxel. A color is then assigned to every voxel depending on the final count. The results showed that the color and shape of the spatial trajectories provide information regarding harmonic distortion, voltage unbalance, and transient phenomena. This method can also be applied to current waveforms. Some examples are provided using real-world waveforms to highlight the benefits of the proposed work.