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.