Accurate frequency estimation with phasor angles

A power system should always operate in a balanced and stable condition at its designed frequency. Any significant upset of this balance will produce a change in the power system frequency. It is the responsibility of the monitoring and protective devices to detect and restore the system to the equilibrium operating condition at the nominal frequency as soon as it is practical to do so. An accurate measurement of both frequency deviation and rate of change of frequency will greatly facilitate the restoration process. In this thesis, a recursive algorithm for precise frequency and rate of change of frequency measurement is presented. The algorithm consists of three major steps. First, a rough frequency estimation for a data window is computed using a second order least error square approximation on the phasor angles of the input waveform. Then, a resampling based on the rough frequency estimation is carried out, followed by another second order least error square approximation to obtain the final results. The results of simulations using this approach are provided.