Strategic and Robust Deployment of Synchronized Phasor Measurement Units with Restricted Channel Capacity

Synchronized phasor measurements are changing the way power systems are monitored and operated. Their efficient incorporation into various applications which are executed in energy management control centers requires strategic placement of these devices. Earlier studies which consider placement of synchronized phasor measurement units (PMUs) to be used for state estimation assume that these devices will have unlimited channel capacities to record as many phase voltages and currents as needed. What differentiates this study from those already reported in the literature is the fact that it accounts for the number of available channels for the chosen type of PMU since all existing PMUs come with a limited number of channels and their costs vary accordingly. This is shown to be a critical factor in strategic placement of these devices. In this study, a revised formulation of the placement problem and its associated solution algorithm will be presented. Examples will be used to illustrate the impact of having limited number of channels on the location and number of required PMUs to make the system observable. Developed methods will take into account existing injection measurements, in particular the virtual measurements such as zero-injections that are available at no cost at electrically passive buses.;Moreover, despite the advances in related technologies, it is almost impossible to guarantee occasional device or communication failure that will lead to loss of data to be received from a given PMU. This work is also aimed to illustrate how the measurement design can be made reliable against such events while maintaining the cost of PMU installations at a minimum by using strategically placed PMUs with the proper number of channels.;Furthermore, it is also demonstrated that depending upon the topology of the network, there will be an upper limit on the number of channels for the PMUs beyond which installation costs will not be reduced any further. Accordingly, numerical results of applying the developed optimization method to power systems with varying sizes and topologies will be presented to illustrate the typical numbers of PMUs and their channel capacities that are required for optimal performance. The results of this work will be more useful as the number of PMU installations increases to levels that will make the system fully observable based solely on PMUs with different number of channel capacities.