Multiple channel PMU placement considering communication constraints

This paper presents an approach for optimal PMU placement for reliable state estimation. The accent is on PMUs with different number of employed channels and communication constraints that may influence the optimal placement strategy. Robustness of a metering scheme is also taken into account. It is evaluated as the ability of a metering scheme to maintain full observability even in case of some practical contingencies like single measurement or branch outage. The optimal placement strategy should satisfy all technical constraints by employing minimal number of PMUs. In order to efficiently solve the optimization problem that deals with multiple criteria, the cellular genetic algorithm with an evolutional rule is employed. Its main features are simple application, flexibility of including various system specific constraints and good convergence with respect to available techniques. An approach based on topological characteristics of the network is employed for reducing computational burden of the observability testing and for narrowing solution search space. Performance of the proposed approach is illustrated on the IEEE standard systems. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.