Abstract Wavelet Transform (WT) is a powerful technique of signal processing, its applications in power systems have been increasing to evaluate power system conditions, such as faults, switching transients, power quality issues, among others. Electromagnetic transients in power systems are due to changes in the network configuration, producing non-periodic signals, which have to be identified to avoid power outages in normal operation or transient conditions. In this paper a methodology to develop a new adaptive mother wavelet for electromagnetic transient analysis is proposed. Classification is carried out with an innovative technique based on adaptive wavelets, where filter bank coefficients will be adapted until a discriminant criterion is optimized. Then, its corresponding filter coefficients will be used to get the new mother wavelet, named wavelet ET, which allowed to identify and to distinguish the high frequency information produced by different electromagnetic transients.