A comparative assessment of two techniques for modal identification from power system measurements

Power system oscillatory behavior can be analyzed in terms of modes, expressed as exponentially modulated sinusoids, exhibited in signals measured on the system. These signals are driven by the behavior of a large, nonlinear, time-variant system. In this paper, two modal identification methods are examined comparatively: Prony analysis and a method based on the Hilbert transform. Considerable structural differences exist between the two methods. Prony analysis yields modes which are directly expressed as exponentially modulated sinusoids, whereas the Hilbert method provides a more general solution. Synthetic and measured signals are used in the comparison. Some general conclusions are drawn from the analysis of several signals, including two sets of measured field data.