Different power quality (PQ) disturbance sources can have major impacts on the power supply grid. This study proposes, for the first time, an early warning approach to identifying PQ problems and providing early warning prompts based on the monitored data of PQ disturbance sources. To establish a steady-state power quality early warning index system, the characteristics of PQ disturbance sources are analyzed and summed up. The higher order statistics anomaly detection (HOSAD) algorithm, based on skewness and kurtosis, and hierarchical power quality early warning flow, were then used to mine limit-exceeding and abnormal data and analyze their severity. Cases studies show that the proposed approach is effective and feasible, and that it is possible to provide timely power quality early warnings for limit-exceeding and abnormal data.