The instantaneous amplitude (IA) based on the higher order differential energy operator is proposed. And its general form for arbitrary order is also proposed. The various definitions of the IA and the instantaneous frequency (IF) estimators are considered. The IA and IF estimators based on the energy operators need less computational cost than the conventional IF and IA estimators exploiting the Hilbert transform. The IF and IA estimators are compared in terms of the frequency and amplitude tracking accuracy of the AM-FM signals. For noiseless case, the IA and IF estimators based on the Teager-Kaiser energy operator show better tracking performance than the IF and IA estimators based on the higher energy operators. However, under noisy condition, the IF and IA estimator based on the higher order energy operators with the order 3 and 4 show better tracking than the Teager-Kaiser energy based estimators. The IF and IA estimators are applied to signals in the various power anomalies to show their usefulness as the disturbance detectors.