Power Quality Monitor for Residential Voltage

TL;DR

This paper introduces an affordable, Arduino-based system for monitoring and analyzing residential power quality, capable of displaying voltage data, harmonic distortion, and Fourier analysis.

Contribution

It presents a low-cost, easy-to-use power quality monitoring system integrating hardware and software for detailed voltage analysis.

Findings

Successfully captures and displays power quality data.

Provides detailed harmonic and Fourier analysis.

Operates at high serial communication baud rates.

Abstract

A simple and inexpensive system capable of displaying relevant power quality data of a residential voltage signal is presented, and it is based on Arduino, Python and Kivy. A circuit for adjusting the voltage signal for sampling is suggested. The software of the system allows the transmission of data with any device capable of serial communication at a 2000000 Baud rate, although an Arduino NANO/UNO board is recommended A board based on an Arduino NANO R3 was used. The software plots the last 6 cycles contained in the data by default, but lets analyze any amount of cycles. It provides the RMS voltage, the peak voltage and the total harmonic distortion of the scrutinized cycles, up to the 25th harmonic. The software is also capable of calculating the fast Fourier transform of the studied cycles, and returning the corresponding plot. A sample of data captured at Maracaibo, Venezuela is shown.