Approach for Multistage Placement of Phasor Measurement Units Based on Stability Criteria

Identification of optimal locations to deploy the phasor measurement units (PMUs) is a preliminary task in wide area monitoring and control of power systems. Given the cost and other associated restrictions, it is highly unlikely for any utility to install all the required number of PMUs to ensure the complete observability of the network. This necessitates judicious identification of locations in the network to deploy the PMUs. Ideally, the choice of location must depend on the intended purpose. In this paper, an approach for placement of PMUs considering both the stability and topological aspects is presented. First, a probabilistic framework based on proximity to instability is proposed to rank the generators/load buses in the order of vulnerability. Subsequently, a binary integer linear programming formulation is proposed to identify the optimal locations considering both stability and topological aspects. The optimal locations obtained using the proposed approach ensures a priori observability of most vulnerable buses in addition to enhancing the network observability. Results on IEEE 39-bus system and 246-bus equivalent system of Indian southern grid are presented to illustrate the proposed approach.