Parameter Estimation in Electrical Power Systems Using Prony's Method

This paper presents the basic principle of Prony's method, which is used for determining electrical power system parameters such as phasors, angular speeds as well as damping factors in a large frequency range. For fixed sampling frequencies, the approach to finding an optimal model order and to extracting transient parameters for further identification of different system effects is shown. Furthermore, it is shown that the method can be applied to the diverse plausibility checks for a confirmation of the result obtained using a conventional Fourier based approach. It will be presented that the significant advantage of the Prony algorithm in comparison to Fourier based methods is the possibility of computing an accurate frequency and in determining a damping factor.