768IEEETRANSACTIONSONPOWERDELIVERY,VOL.21,NO.2,APRIL2006ANovelPowerQualityMonitoringAllocationAlgorithmMohamedAminEldery,StudentMember,IEEE,EhabF.El-Saadany,SeniorMember,IEEE,MagdyM.A.Salama,Fellow,IEEE,andAnthonyVannelli,Member,IEEEAbstract—Distributedmeasurementarchitecture,duetoitsef-2)locatingthePQevents,3)sharinginformationamongre-ficiency,isusedtomonitorthepowerqualityintheelectricsys-motesites,4)studyingthepropagationofPQproblemsinthetems.Thispaperintroducesanovelalgorithmtodeterminethesystem,5)evaluatingthePQcosteffect,and6)enhancingpre-optimumallocationsofpowerqualitymonitorstoreducethecostofthedistributedmonitoringsystemtakingintoaccountthedatadictivemaintenanceprograms.So,thenewtrendinPQmoni-redundancy.Theoptimizationproblemisformulatedasacoveringtoringistheevolutionfromoneseparatedeviceintomonitoringandpackingonewhichcanbemanipulatedbyintegerlinearpro-thewholeelectricsystem.grammalgorithms.TheappropriateconstraintsarededucedbyMonitoringasystemfacestwomainproblems.Thefirsttheelectricalcircuittopologyindependentoftheloadparameters.problemisthecommunicationamongtheremotesiteswhileInaddition,theproblemisadoptedtoageneralformwhichcanbeimplementedbyanyoptimizationpackage.Theproposedalgo-thesecondisthehighcostofthemonitoringsystemitself.Torithmisappliedtofivedifferentsystemsforvalidation.Then,thesolvethefirstproblem,recentadvancesinInternetcommuni-resultsarediscussedintermsofthecostanddataredundancy.cationandreal-timeapplicationshavebeenadaptedtomonitorIndexTerms—Coveringandpacking,deregulation,lineartheentirepowersystem.Reducingthecostassociatedwithintegerprogramming,powerquality,powerqualityinfonodesthemonitoringprocedurecanbeachievedbythreedifferent(PQIN),powerqualitymonitoring,TOMLAB.methods:1)reducingthecostofthePQmonitors,2)optimizingthenumberofPQmonitorstobeinstalled,and3)combiningboth.AlthoughthefirstaspectisaddressedinanumberofI.INTRODUCTIONpublicationsthattrytoreducethecostbyusingtheDistributedHILEreliabilitymeasurestheavailabili