The instantaneous frequency gives a frequency value at a time instance. Thus, it is natural to use the instantaneous frequency for detecting disturbances of voltage signal in power line. Various instantaneous frequency estimators are introduced. By applying to different types of disturbed signals, we show the estimators' ability to classify flickers. Also, the computational costs are compared between different instantaneous frequency estimators. The Prony's method (PRONY) and the modified covariance method (MCOV) need relatively smaller amount of calculation than the Teager-Kaiser energy operator based estimator (DESA II). For an AM-FM modulated signal, the tracking performance of different instantaneous frequency estimators is also compared. Through simulation, it is shown that MCOV produces less variant frequency estimation values than DESA II and PRONY method