Allocation of Optimal PMUs for Power System Observability Using PROMETHEE Approach

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are becoming a vital measurement device in wide-area monitoring, operation, and control. The allocation of PMU at each bus will make that bus directly observable. However, considering the high installation costs, it is not feasible to place PMU at each bus. Thus, placing the PMUs at optimal locations is extremely important. In this study, the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluation (PROMETHEE)-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique has been applied for the optimal allocation of phasor measurement units (PMUs) with the aim of achieving full system observability. Along with the entire network observability, the proposed approach provides maximum measurement redundancy (MR) too. Unlike some previous popular MCDM techniques, the proposed approach obtains optimal PMU placement (OPP) solution without performing pruning operations. Different criterion has been formulated to construct a decision matrix (DM). This DM helps in calculating the net outranking flow (NOF) of all the buses during the PROMETHEE approach. Based on the maximum NOF value, the PMUs are placed at those buses. The proposed approach also considers the inclusion of zero injection buses (ZIBs). Further, cases such as single PMU outage and existence of conventional measurements have been considered while determining optimal locations of PMUs. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated on IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, 57-bus, and 118-bus systems, one Indian practical utility, i.e., Northern Regional Power Grid (NRPG) 246-bus system, and larger Polish 2383-bus system. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, it has been compared with some of the popular existing techniques.