This project investigates the use of synchronized measurement technology (SMT) for real-time monitoring, security, and control of power systems. SMT offers the advantage of synchronizing measurements from widely dispersed locations with respect to a global positioning system (GPS) clock. Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are the most advanced SMT-based devices available to the power system engineers and operators. When placed at a bus, the PMU can measure the voltage phasor at that bus, as well as the current phasors through the transmission lines incident to that bus. The measurements are time-stamped with respect to the GPS clock and transmitted to the local or remote data center at a rate of up to 60 times per second. Use of SMT offers wide-area visibility of a power system in real-time.
The first part of the project is the development of methodologies and algorithms for the optimal placement of PMUs for complete system observability in the presence of conventional measurements. A number of issues such as measurement redundancy, loss of line, loss of communication channels, and loss of measurement devices will be incorporated in these methodologies. This is in essence a multiobjective optimization problem with conflicting maximization/minimization objectives.
A major part of the project will be devoted on state estimation in power systems in the presence of synchronized measurements. This is a timely and critical research topic, especially as PMUs continue to increasingly being deployed in power systems around the world. One of the work packages of this project will concentrate on how to optimally deploy PMU devices in the power system to improve state estimator performance; another work package running simultaneously, will concentrate on the development of a hybrid state estimator.
