Integrating a feature selection algorithm for classification of voltage sags originated in transmission and distribution networks

As a global problem in the power quality area, voltage sags are matter of high interest for both utilities and customers. With a view to resolving the problem of sag source location in the power network, this paper introduces a new method based on dimension reduction capability of Multiway Principal Component Analysis (MPCA). MPCA models are developed using three dimensional databases of voltage and current Root Mean Square (RMS) values. Computed scores are then used for training commonly used classifiers for putting sags in two classes. A feature selection algorithm is successfully applied for determining the optimal subsets of scores for training classifiers and also the number of principal components in the MPCA models. The proposed method is tested with success using some real voltage sags recorded in some substations. Also, through some experiments we demonstrate that satisfactorily high classification rates must be attributed to the applied feature selection algorithm. © 2007 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.