Optimum Placement of Phasor Measurement Units in Power Systems

In this paper, we proposed to evaluate the optimal phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement based on the sum of variance (SV) of the robust estimators. Variance is traditionally used as a measure of the quality of estimates. In this paper, after satisfying the requirements of the minimum number of PMUs, maximum measurement redundancy, and observability, the placements obtained are further distinguished on the basis of the variance of the estimated states. Both the weighted least squares (WLS) and robust estimators are considered. Examples on the IEEE 30-bus system using least absolute value (LAV) estimation are given. The covariance of the state estimates from the WLS can be calculated using the existing formulas. However, there is no equivalent formula for the robust LAV estimator. A formula is derived in this paper using influence function to approximately calculate the covariance matrix of the state estimates from the robust LAV estimator. The optimum placement, i.e., the placement with the smallest SV, can be selected.