Analysis of the Practical Implementation of Flicker Measurement Coprocessor for AMI Meters

• Main Authors: Krzysztof Kołek, Andrzej Firlit, Krzysztof Piątek, Krzysztof Chmielowiec
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: flicker measurements; power quality; voltage fluctuations; FPGA; fixed-point arithmetic; AMI meters with power quality indicators
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/6/1589

Monitoring power quality (PQ) indicators is an important part of modern power grids’ maintenance. Among different PQ indicators, flicker severity coefficients <i>P</i>_st and <i>P</i>_lt are measures of voltage fluctuations. In state-of-the-art PQ measuring devices, the flicker measurement channel is usually implemented as a dedicated processor subsystem. Implementation of the IEC 61000‑4‑15 compliant flicker measurement algorithm requires a significant amount of computational power. In typical PQ analysers, the flicker measurement is usually implemented as a part of the meter’s algorithm performed by the main processor. This paper considers the implementation of the flicker measurement as an FPGA module to offload the processor subsystem or operate as an IP core in FPGA-based system-on-chip units. The measurement algorithm is developed and validated as a Simulink diagram, which is then converted to a fixed-point representation. Parts of the diagram are applied for automatic VHDL code generation, and the classifier block is implemented as a local soft-processor system. A simple eight-bit processor operates within the flicker measurement coprocessor and performs statistical operations. Finally, an IP module is created that can be considered as a flicker coprocessor module. When using the coprocessor, the main processor’s only role is to trigger the coprocessor and read the results, while the coprocessor independently calculates the flicker coefficients.