IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences (ICTES 2007),

Dr. M.G.R. University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dec. 20-22, 2007. pp.1-7.

DEVELOPMENT OF WEB BASED POWER QUALITY

MONITORING SYSTEM FOR HANDLING USER CUSTOM
POWER QUALITY QUERY AND AUTO POWER QUALITY
MONITORING REPORT NOTIFICATION VIA EMAIL
Bansidhar E. Kushare*, Ashok A. Ghatol, Sumit Kala

*
EED, KKWIEE&R, Nashik India, be_kushare@rediffmail.com
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonehere and Vice President of
Indian Society for Technical Education, New Delhi, India

Coriolis Technologies, Pune, India

Keywords: Power quality, Monitoring, Harmonics

swell, over-voltage, under-voltages and harmonic distortions

[5, 10]. Majority of the equipments used in industries are
sensitive to power quality problems. To avoid the malfunction
and unnecessary costs it is necessary to install power quality
monitoring system to understand the problem and provide
cost effective solution [3]. In order to improve electric power
quality and energy efficiency, the sources and causes of such
disturbance must be known for both supply and demand sides
before appropriate corrective or mitigating action can be
taken [13]. A constant supervision of power quality allows
the user to notify the power distributor about problems with
delivered energy. A real time power quality monitoring will
help to take some corrective actions such as power factor
correction, consumption reduction etc.

Abstract
Power quality monitoring has increasing role in deregulated
electricity supply market. Various utilities all over the world
are collecting power quality data to provide a power quality
database as a source of benchmark. In deregulated electricity
market utilities will be required to provide reliability and
power quality indices. Industrial and commercial customers
are increasingly getting affected by poor power quality
problems. A real time power quality monitoring will help to
take some corrective actions. A web based, near real time
power quality monitoring system is necessary to provide such
information, both locally and on Nation wide basis to
customer. This paper discusses the web based power quality
monitoring system. The entire system has been developed on
Java technology. The power quality web based system
implemented allows user to access the power quality
information and provides auto email notification of the
custom power quality report to specified user. The other
facilities provided are auto plotting of various RMS voltage
variation events such as voltage sag and swell on ITIC or user
specified curve and facility of trending plot of total harmonic
voltage and current distortion. The proposed system will be
useful to industrial customers and utilities.

The major problem faced during the power quality

monitoring is, analyzing vast volume of power quality data
collected. User is required to do labor intensive manual
process of trying to identify the required power quality event
that has occurred with their characteristics visually through
Gigabytes of data. When monitored data of various sites is
available the task of identifying the specified power quality
event in which user is interested based on objectives becomes
tedious. The other problem associated with various power
quality equipments is limited storage and in various sites
where the disturbing loads form the major portion of total
load, the memory capacity of monitor gets over. Once the
memory of the monitor is full the system error causes
equipment to stop monitoring. To avoid the problem it is
necessary to download the data automatically to the server
through an Ethernet network. A key feature for analyzing the
vast volume of power quality data collected by monitors is to
develop suitable algorithm that will be able to automatically
detect power quality event as per user query. Ability to
automatically detect abnormal variation from normal form
existing database will allow operators or user to be notified

1 Introduction
Power quality has become important concern for utility,
facility managers and consulting engineers in recent years.
End user equipments are more sensitive to various power
quality problems that arise both on the power supply system
and within customer facilities [13]. Poor quality of electric
supply is normally caused by power line disturbances such as
transients, notches, momentary interruptions, voltage sag and

IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences

automatically through email. A web based, near real time

power quality monitoring system will provide such
information, both locally and on Nation wide basis to
customer. The authors have developed and implemented web
based power quality monitoring system which will be useful
for the utilities and industrial customers. Web based power
quality monitoring system has been presented with result.

9. Availability of web base power quality and reliability

indices of various utilities will help the customer to choose
the electric supply and utilities to offer differentiated services
for customer that have special requirement [7].

3 Overview of Previous Work Related to Web

Based Power Quality Monitoring

2 Need for Web Based Power Quality

Monitoring System

Reference [8], proposed the methodology for distributed

power quality measuring system to monitor a number of
power quality indices on every load connected to the point of
common coupling. To transmit the measured values to master
device that processes them in order to locate the source of
unbalance and harmonic distortion and to quantify the effect
of such disturbance on power quality. A distributed master
slave structure was adopted as the architecture of the
measurement system. A slave system was located on each
metering section. Each slave system acquires the line voltages
and currents in the metering section and determines the RMS
value and frequency domain components. The total active
power, the apparent power and power factor are then obtained
together with generalized THD factor. All measured
quantities are averaged on a pre-settable time interval and
transmitted to master system through intranet or if necessary
through internet.

There is need for permanent power quality monitoring system

because of following reasons:
1. With the increasing problems in electrical distribution
system, there is a need to have thorough power supply and
distribution system monitoring and measurement before a
solution is proposed [13].
2. The well known problem of current harmonics must be
monitored on a continuous basis to ensure that, over a
time, the incremental addition of loads does not cause
excessive heating that can lead to power loss, premature
failure of transformer, capacitor etc [13].
3. Continuous tracing of power consumption and electrical
quantities provide useful data for planning future plant
expansion and for ensuring that existing and future
distribution feeder are adequate [13].

The proposed master system has complete visibility on all

measured quantities and indices in different metering
sections. The master system can be located away from the
PCC, thus allowing for a centralized, remote control of power
quality. The master system has therefore the capability of
identifying the source producing distortions and quantifying
their detrimental effects on the power quality. The master
system also logs all values coming from the slave systems for
post processing purpose.

4. To detect on continuous basis various symptoms of power

quality such as harmonic distortion, voltage dips,
interruption, transient etc. The available data will help in
taking remedial action under power quality predictive
maintenance philosophy before the problem causes any
damage to equipment.
5. Extrapolating the available power quality information,
predictive analysis can be performed to forecast specific
breakdown conditions, like overheating of switch boards,
current surges, over voltage, voltage sags and fluctuations
or to detect deterioration and PQ degradation. Through
early detection it is possible to take corrective action to
rectify or retrofit the situation.

A critical point of this architecture is the need to process the

data obtained by measurements performed simultaneously by
all slave devices. The synchronization proposed was by
synchronization of clock of master and slave devices, but is
expensive. The measured value of indices was plotted with
time. According to reference [8], the analysis of all these
indices performed by master unit leads the evaluation of
global index that provides on the test network considered,
correct information on the location of sources producing
distortion and measurement of their effect on power quality.

6. Availability of data base related to power quality and

reliability indices to electricity regulator and customers is
one of the requirements in deregulated electricity market.
7. Availability of system wide data base on web at various
voltage levels will help the customer to decide
specification of newly procured equipment to overcome
incompatibility issues.

Reference [3], has proposed PQ monitoring system with

central monitoring. Proposed monitoring system basically
consists of one power quality analyzer and multiple power
quality meters. Power quality meters only act as raw data
acquisition system and power quality analyzer performs all
calculations and have analysis algorithm. According to author
the proposed system is very economical especially for large

8. Availability of system wide power quality data base on

web will be useful for manufacture of sensitive equipment
to make required changes in design to make their
equipment compatible to existing electrical environment.
2

Development of Web Based Power Quality Monitoring System for Handling User Custom Power Quality Query and Auto Power ...

components of proposed system consist of following

hardware components:
1. PQ monitoring instrument.
2. Modems for communications
3. Central server and workstation
4. UPS
5. Back up tape
6. GPS

scale system, because the price of power quality meter can be

dramatically lowered in the proposed scheme. One of the
draw back of this system is that as the individual PQ meter
transfers raw data, the communication burden will be heavy.
But according to authors current Ethernet communication
technology will help to solve the problem in near future.
PQ monitoring algorithm that detects events and captures
steady state trends. Result of voltage sag waveform captured
and waveform and harmonic components for current
harmonics are only presented.

The captured data through power quality monitor is outputted

to communication network through a MODEM. The standard
outputs of the meter include supply frequencies, RMS
voltage, RMS current, voltage harmonic spectrum and current
harmonic spectrum up to the 127th harmonic current, crest
factor, KW, KVA, KVAR, displacement power factor and
total power factor, phase angles at the fundamental
component and at each harmonic component would also be
displayed. The PQ meter measures and store the data then the
data is transmitted to the central system server through leased
dial up line, customer intranet, Ethernet network or DSL
modem. The network is specially designed to be able to use
various communication means, so that different customer
needs would be met. For very remote sites where
communication network is not available, wireless
communication using GMS format or radio would be
adopted.

Leandro Fabrico Auler etal [9], presented new protocols for

monitoring power quality in an industrial environment by
means of Ethernet networks to perform a real time waveform
monitoring, allowing an oscilloscope like analysis.
In reference [14], a system approach to power quality
monitoring for performance assessment is presented. The
configuration complexity of a PQ monitoring system depends
primarily upon the number of instruments used to acquire the
information and number of people who need to utilize it. The
simplest monitoring system could be of self contained circuit
monitor or device built in sensitive load. The real value of the
monitoring system is an automatic data downloading from the
measuring instruments. RS 232 port is used to communicate
with a number of monitors. Two way communications
between work station and monitors is becoming more and
more important. A complete monitoring should fully utilize
the networking infrastructure. Data can also down loaded
from monitoring system by way of broad band modems, as
well as through internet or intranet connection. Access to the
data base is given through password. Another option for data
access is to use the standard world wide browser to query a
database server. Customer can be given password to view
summaries and reports via the internet. The internet offers an
effective vehicle for providing power quality monitoring as
an enhanced level of service.

In previously published literature the various facilities such as

harmonic compliance, plotting events on ITIC, SEMI F47 or
customer specified voltage tolerance curve and selection of
various characteristics of specified power quality event are
not provided. The work presented in this paper provides all
these facilities and is more user friendly.

4 Web Based Power Quality Monitoring

System Experimental Set Up
The web based system developed is having following facility:
1. The computer server is used to store monitored data and
implemented on Tomcat web server.
2. A multi-Giga byte drive is used to store the power
quality data.
3. With this Giga byte drive, it is possible to store data for
two years in case of on line monitoring.
4. Internet is used to disseminate the power quality data to
concerned engineers and users.
5. Using web based system user is allowed to access data
from existing data base with user name and password.
6. Facility of custom query related to various power quality
parameters is provided.

In reference [12], web based access to the power quality

monitoring system is presented. According to author the
information from the power quality monitor should be
available immediately and conveniently and the best option
available is to make the system completely accessible via
internet or intranet. Theses systems are connected directly to
the network with TCP/IP communications. With such a
system any one who needs data related to particular event or
summarized performance over a month can get access to the
information.
Ringo PK Lee etal [13], explained and demonstrated the
architecture of designing a web based multi channel power
quality monitoring system for a large network. The various

IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences

7.

User can select the query parameters, the algorithm find

out the result of the query.
8.
In case of on line power quality monitored data, a
custom report is generated based on threshold set by
user and it is emailed to the specified person after
uploading of data into a laptop connected to the power
quality monitor via public modem.
9. Facility to provide harmonic compliance as per IEEE
519-1992 is provided.
10. Auto plotting of monitored RMS voltage events such as
voltage sag and swell from database on ITIC curve, or
user supplied curve.
11. Trending plot of total harmonic voltage and current
distortion facility is available. This trend can be selected
for the one day, one week, one month, one year or any
arbitrary period of time based on the period during
which data was monitored. It is a convenient method to
summarize the power quality of a site over a given
period of time.

Web based power quality monitoring system consists of

two sections:
1.
2.

Power quality monitoring system is implemented with:

1.
2.
3.

2.
3.

Monitoring software is software which controls the power

quality analyzer through TCP/IP connectivity. This software
is written in Java and performs following steps.
1. Start the recording of the monitor as per user selectable
date and time setting.
2. Stop the recording after the specific time interval.
3. Transfer the power quality data from power quality
monitor (flash card memory) to computer secondary
storage device.
4. After transferring the data it converts this unsorted data
into MS-ACESS compatible database.
5. Power quality database is further classified into sub
categories.
6. This database is used to create user defined power
quality report.
7. This report is then sent to concerned person as an email
attachment.

A computer with an internet connection, and a Mozilla

compatible web server.
The address (URL) of the power quality database.
Appropriate user ID and password to access database.

No special hardware, software or training is required for user.

The users are allowed to provide access, for reading data base
only and not allowed to change the existing monitored data
base. All of this allows the user to view power quality data
without having to install a large amount of software in their
computers.
1.

2.

Monitoring software (running on laptop or PC).

Power quality analyzer (HIOKI 3196).
CDMA phone.

4.1 Monitoring software

For a user to view data, following three things are

required:
1.

Monitoring systems.
Web based power quality database server.

4.2 Power quality monitor

For power quality monitoring, HIOKI 3196 power quality
analyzer is used. This device has Ethernet and RS 232
connectivity.

While the data gathering and characterization is

conducted at central location, the information is
available to user with web browser.
Security protocols and passwords were built to keep
unauthorized personal from viewing highly confidential
and often propriety data.

Figure 1 shows a web based power quality monitoring

experimental set up and figure 2 shows the automatic
download software window. The user can enter various
entries such as day, month, year, hour, minutes, setting and
path. The other function provided are directory check,
download, start recording, stop recording, reset the data,
automation and format card. Figure 3 shows the main page of
the power quality monitoring database server. The user is
required to enter username and password to login to the
system. After successful login it displays the second page of
power quality database server on screen. Figure 4 shows
second page of power quality data base server. The various
selectable facilities provided for user are database available,
custom query, THD curve, email notification and compliance

The power quality web based system server makes power

quality information and data available to the user. In order to
access the data, the user needs to know address of power
quality data site, have a web browser such as Netscape
navigator or Microsoft internet explorer and required
username and password to get access to the web based power
quality monitoring system. Both recent and historical data can
be viewed at any time from any internet connected PC using
web browser. This system is tested on local area network of
the institute and implemented on internet.

Development of Web Based Power Quality Monitoring System for Handling User Custom Power Quality Query and Auto Power ...

curve. The next step is to click on the database available, the

next page displayed will show the list of various database
available. Figure 5 shows the screen showing available
database. The user will have to select the data base from the
available database.
After selecting the database the next step is to click on custom
query as shown in figure 6. The various custom query options
and selection details is shown in figure 8. After selecting and
setting the parameter related to custom and clicking query
button developed software will search the query from existing
database and the result generated is shown in figure 7.
The facility of IEEE 519-1992 harmonic compatibility is
shown in figure 9, ITHD trending facility is shown in figure 10
and ITIC curve compatibility evaluation is shown in figure
11.

Figure 3: Main page of web based power quality monitoring

system

Figure 1: Web based power quality monitoring setup

Figure 4: Second page of web based power quality

monitoring system

Figure 2: The automatic download software version 3.01 for

the HIOKI 3196

Figure 5: Web based power quality monitoring system page

showing database available

IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences

Figure 6: Web based power quality monitoring system, query

selection page

Figure 9: IEEE 519-1992 harmonic compliance

Figure 7: Power quality query result generated by web based

power quality monitoring system

Figure 10: ITHD trend plotting facility

Figure 8: Setting power quality query characteristic page

Figure 11: Auto plotting of event on ITIC curve

Development of Web Based Power Quality Monitoring System for Handling User Custom Power Quality Query and Auto Power ...

The above proposed implemented system will be useful to

industrial customers and utilities.

5 Results and Discussion

Web based power quality monitoring system has been
presented with results. The entire system has been
implemented by using Java based monitoring software
developed and running on laptop, power quality analyzer
(HIOKI 3196) and CDMA phone. The power quality web
based implemented system allows user to access the power
quality information. In order to access the data, the user needs
to know address of power quality data site, have a web
browser such as internet explorer and requires valid username
and password to login to the web based system. Both recent
and historical data can be viewed at any time from any
internet connected PC through web browser. This system is
tested on local area network of the institute and can be
implemented on internet. In case of online power quality
monitored data, based on the user set event threshold, during
starting of PQ monitoring provides auto email notification of
PQ report automatically to all email IDs specified by the
user, after data is uploaded to a laptop connected to power
quality monitor via public modem.

References
[1] A. K. Khan, Monitoring power for the future, IEE
Power Engineering Journal, April 2001.
[2] C. J. Melhorn, S. Smith, F. Sinicola, P. Muccio,
Utilization of web based power quality monitoring to assess
customer power system performance.
[3] D. J. Won etal, Development of power quality
monitoring system with central processing scheme, 0-78037519-X, IEEE 2002.
[4] IEEE Std. 1159-1995-IEEE Recommended practice for
monitoring electric power quality.
[5] J. Arrilaga etal, Power system harmonic analysis, New
York; Wiley 1997.
[6] J. Arrillaga, S. Chen, N. R. Waston, Power system
quality assessment, John Wiley and Sons, 2000.
[7] L. Brooks, R. C. Dugan etal, Indices for assessing
utility distribution system RMS variation performance, IEEE
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[8] L. Cristaldi, A. Ferrero Etal, A distributed system for
electric power quality measurement, IEEE Transactions on
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[9] L. Fabrico, D. Roberto Amore, Power quality
monitoring and control using Ethernet Network, 0-78037671-4, IEEE 2002.
[10] M. H. J. Bollen, Understanding power quality problem;
voltage sags and interruptions, New York: IEEE Press,
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[11] McGranghan Mark, Trends in power quality
monitoring, IEEE Power Engineering Review, Oct.2001.
[12] R. Ignall, M. M. Granaghan, Power quality monitoring
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[13] Ringo etal, A web based with multi-channel power
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Approach to power quality monitoring for performance
assessment

6 Conclusion
The developed web based online power quality monitored
data system, based on the user set event threshold, during
starting of PQ monitoring provides auto email notification of
PQ report automatically to all email IDs specified by the user,
after data is uploaded to a laptop connected to power quality
monitor via public modem. The various advantages of
proposed scheme are:
1. Ability of the algorithm to automatically detect power
quality user requested query related to various power
quality abnormalities from the existing database.
2. Ability to automatically detect the abnormal variations
from normal variation set by user during start of power
quality monitoring from uploaded PQ monitored data on
laptop and auto email notification to user.
3. Facility to auto plotting of various rms voltage variation
events such as voltage sag and swell on ITIC curve.
4. Facility of trending plot of total harmonic voltage and
current. These trends can be selected for one day, one
week, one month and one year or any arbitrary period of
time based on the period for which data was monitored.