The lack of measurements in distribution grids poses a severe challenge for their monitoring: since there may not be enough sensors to achieve numerical observability, load forecasts (pseudo-measurements) are typically used, and thus an accurate state estimation is not guaranteed. However, an estimation is required to control distribution grids given the increasing amount of distributed generation. Therefore, we consider the problem of optimal sensor placement to improve the state estimation accuracy in large-scale, 3-phase coupled, unbalanced distribution grids. This is a combinatorial optimization problem whose optimal solution is unpractical to obtain for large networks. We explore the properties of different metrics in the context of optimal experimental design, like convexity and modularity, to propose and compare several tight lower and upper bounds on the performance of the optimal solution. Moreover, we show how to use these bounds to choose near-optimal solutions. We test the method on two IEEE benchmark test feeders, the 123-bus and the 8500-node feeders, to show the effectiveness of the approach.
Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) technology is increasingly used for real-time monitoring applications, especially line outage detection and identification (D&I) in the power system. Current outage D&I schemes either assume a full PMU deployment or a partial deployment with fixed PMU placement. However, the placement of the PMUs has a fundamental impact on the effectiveness of the D&I scheme. Building on a dynamic relationship between the substation voltage phase angle and active power, we formulated the optimal PMU placement problem for outage D&I as an optimization problem readily solvable by a…
This paper presents an innovative approach to micro-phasor measurement unit (micro-PMU) placement in unbalanced distribution networks. The methodology accounts for the presence of single-and-two-phase laterals and acknowledges the fact that observing one phase in a distribution circuit does not translate to observing the other phases. Other practical constraints such as presence of distributed loads, unknown regulator/ transformer tap ratios, zero-injection phases (ZIPs), modern smart meters, and multiple switch configurations are also incorporated. The proposed micro-PMU placement problem is …
PMU Placement Optimization for Smart Grid Obvervability and State Estimation
University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）；King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals（法赫德国王石油与矿产大学）；Queen’s University Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）
Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are important devices for protection, monitoring, and control of modern power systems. Unlike the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system which only measure the magnitude, PMUs can provide a set of synchronized phasor measurements with high sampling rate with the accuracy of less than one second, for better system monitoring especially during the outages. Since the PMUs are costly devices, system operator is not able to install a PMU at each bus to maximize the observability of system. To this end, determination of the number of PMUs in the syste…
In this paper, a phasor measurement unit (PMU)-based wide-area damping control method is proposed to damp the interarea oscillations that threaten the modern power system stability and security. Utilizing the synchronized PMU data, the proposed almost model-free approach can achieve an effective damping for the selected modes using a minimum number of synchronous generators. Simulations are performed to show the validity of the proposed wide-area damping control scheme.
This paper proposed an approach to identify the change of inertia distribution in high renewable power systems. Using the footprints of electromechanical wave propagation at the distribution level, this approach provides a new and non-invasive way to aware the system inertia distribution for primary frequency response. Actual measurements and high renewable dynamic models validated effectiveness of the approach.
Using optimal phasor measurement unit placement as a prototypical problem, we assess the computational viability of the current generation D-Wave Systems 2000Q quantum annealer for power systems design problems. We reformulate minimum dominating set for the annealer hardware, solve the reformulation for a standard set of IEEE test systems, and benchmark solution quality and time to solution against the CPLEX Optimizer and simulated annealing. For some problem instances the 2000Q outpaces CPLEX. For instances where the 2000Q underperforms with respect to CPLEX and simulated annealing, we sugges…
The electrical power grid is a critical infrastructure, with disruptions in transmission having severe repercussions on daily activities, across multiple sectors. To identify, prevent, and mitigate such events, power grids are being refurbished as 'smart' systems that include the widespread deployment of GPS-enabled phasor measurement units (PMUs). PMUs provide fast, precise, and time-synchronized measurements of voltage and current, enabling real-time wide-area monitoring and control. However, the potential benefits of PMUs, for analyzing grid events like abnormal power oscillations and load …
It is critical that the qualities and features of synthetically-generated, PMU measurements used for grid analysis matches those of measurements obtained from field-based PMUs. This ensures that analysis results generated by researchers during grid studies replicate those outcomes typically expected by engineers in real-life situations. In this paper, essential features associated with industry PMU-derived data measurements are analyzed for input considerations in the generation of vast amounts of synthetic power system data. Inherent variabilities in PMU data as a result of the random dynamic…
Phasor measurement units (PMUs) enable better system monitoring and security enhancement in smart grids. In order to enhance power system resilience against outages and blackouts caused by extreme weather events or man-made attacks, it remains a major challenge to determine the optimal number and location of PMUs. In this paper, a multi-objective resilient PMU placement (MORPP) problem is formulated, and solved by a modified Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization (MO-TLBO) algorithm. Three objectives are considered in the MORPP problem, minimizing the number of PMUs, maximizing the system observ…
We consider the problem of PMU-based state estimation combining information coming from ubiquitous power demand time series and only a limited number of PMUs. Conversely to recent literature in which synchrophasor devices are often assumed perfectly synchronized with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), we explicitly consider the presence of time-synchronization errors in the measurements due to different non-ideal causes such as imperfect satellite localization and internal clock inaccuracy. We propose a recursive Kalman-based algorithm which allows for the explicit offline computation of th…
Time-synchronization attacks on phasor measurement units (PMU) pose a real threat to smart grids; it was shown that they are feasible in practice and that they can have a non-negligible negative impact on the state estimation, without triggering the bad-data detection mechanisms. Previous works identified vulnerability conditions when targeted PMUs measure a single phasor. Yet, PMUs are capable of measuring several quantities. We present novel vulnerability conditions in the general case where PMUs measure any number of phasors and can share the same time reference. One is a sufficient conditi…
This paper considers the problem of fault detection and localization in active distribution networks using PMUs. The proposed algorithm consists in computing a set of weighted least squares state estimates whose results are used to detect, characterize and localize the occurrence of a fault. Moreover, a criteria to minimize the number of PMUs required to correctly perform the proposed algorithm is defined. Such a criteria, based on system observability conditions, allows the design of an optimization problem to set the positions of PMUs along the grid, in order to get the desired fault localiz…
Solar distribution feeders are commonly used in solar farms that are integrated into distribution substations. In this paper, we focus on a real-world solar distribution feeder and conduct an event-based analysis by using micro-PMU measurements. The solar distribution feeder of interest is a behind-the-meter solar farm with a generation capacity of over 4 MW that has about 200 low-voltage distributed photovoltaic (PV) inverters. The event-based analysis in this study seeks to address the following practical matters. First, we conduct event detection by using an unsupervised machine learning ap…
In modern smart grids deployed with various advanced sensors, e.g., phasor measurement units (PMUs), bad (anomalous) measurements are always inevitable in practice. Considering the imperative need for filtering out potential bad data, this paper develops a novel online bad PMU data detection (BPDD) approach for regional phasor data concentrators (PDCs) by sufficiently exploring spatial-temporal correlations. With no need for costly data labeling or iterative learning, it performs model-free, label-free, and non-iterative BPDD in power grids from a new data-driven perspective of spatial-tempora…
Big data analytic applications using phasor measurements help improve the situation awareness of grid operators to better operate and control the system. Phasor measurement unit (PMU) data from actual grids is viewed as highly confidential and is not publicly available to researchers and educators. This paper develops a methodology to synthesize PMU data that can be accessed and shared freely, with a focus on input data preparation. Time series of demand- and generation-side input data are generated using public data from different utilities and statistical analysis methods. Detailed load dyna…
Selection of Optimal Number and Location of PMUs for CNN Based Fault Location and Identification
Lane Department of Computer Science（计算机科学系）；Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV USA（电气工程，西弗吉尼亚大学，莫尔甘顿，WV USA）；Electrical Engineering West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV USA（电气工程 西弗吉尼亚大学，莫尔甘顿，WV USA）
With the increasing penetration of renewable resources in the distribution grid, the demand for alternatives to grid reinforcement measures rises. One possible solution is the use of battery systems to balance the power flow at crucial locations in the grid. Hereby the optimal location and size of the system has to be determined in regards of investment and grid stabilizing effect. In this paper the optimal placement and sizing of battery storage systems for grid stabilization in a small distribution grid in southern Germany with high PV- penetration is investigated and compared to a grid heur…
This paper introduces an algorithm able to detect and localize the occurrance of a fault in an Active Distribution Network, using the measurements collected by Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs). First, a basic algorithm that works under the assumption that all grid buses are equipped with a PMU is designed. Then, formal observability conditions that allow detection and localization with a reduced number of PMUs are provided. Based on these conditions, the algorithm is extended to perform correctly when not all network buses are monitored. Moreover, an Optimal Positioning Algorithm, always based …
Sensing and measurement systems are quintessential to the safe and reliable operation of electric power grids. Their strategic placement is of ultimate importance because it is not economically viable to install measurement systems on every node and branch of a power grid, though they need to be monitored. An overwhelming number of strategies have been developed to meet oftentimes multiple conflicting objectives. The prime challenge in formulating the problem lies in developing a heuristic or an optimization model that, though mathematically tractable and constrained in cost, leads to trustwor…
Dynamic state and parameter estimation (DSE) plays a key role for reliably monitoring and operating future, power-electronics-dominated power systems. While DSE is a very active research field, experimental applications of proposed algorithms to real-world systems remain scarce. This motivates the present paper, in which we demonstrate the effectiveness of a DSE algorithm previously presented by parts of the authors with real-world data collected by a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) at a substation close to a power plant within the extra-high voltage grid of Germany. To this end, at first we der…
Power systems are prone to a variety of events (e.g. line trips and generation loss) and real-time identification of such events is crucial in terms of situational awareness, reliability, and security. Using measurements from multiple synchrophasors, i.e., phasor measurement units (PMUs), we propose to identify events by extracting features based on modal dynamics. We combine such traditional physics-based feature extraction methods with machine learning to distinguish different event types. Including all measurement channels at each PMU allows exploiting diverse features but also requires lea…
This paper proposes a method of identifying single line outages in power systems based on phasor measurement unit (PMU) measurements and ac power flow models. In addition to the main identification algorithm, a rejection filter is introduced so that the preliminary identified results can be further processed and categorized into three types: correctly identified, misidentified and inconclusive (including correct-filtered and misidentified-filtered). The methods are systematically tested using test systems of various sizes for various PMU placements, and the results show that the proposed ident…
With the increasing penetration of converter-based renewable resources, different types of dynamics have been introduced to the power system. Due to the complexity and high order of the modern power system, mathematical model-based inertia estimation method becomes more difficult. This paper proposes two novel machine learning assisted inertia estimation methods based on long-recurrent convolutional neural (LRCN) network and graph convolutional neural (GCN) network respectively. Informative features are extracted from ambient measurements collected through phasor measurement units (PMU). Spati…
An increase in the integration of Inverter Based Resources (IBRs) to the electric grid, will lead to a corresponding decrease in the amount of connected synchronous generators, resulting in a decline in the available rotational inertia system-wide. This can lead to pronounced frequency deviations when there are disturbances and faults in the grid. This decline in available rotational inertia can be compensated for by fast acting IBRs participating in frequency response services, by rapidly injecting into or removing power from the grid. Currently, there are still relative small number of sizab…
Large-scale blackouts that have occurred in the past few decades have necessitated the need to do extensive research in the field of grid security assessment. With the aid of synchrophasor technology, which uses phasor measurement unit (PMU) data, dynamic security assessment (DSA) can be performed online. However, existing applications of DSA are challenged by variability in system conditions and unaccounted for measurement errors. To overcome these challenges, this research develops a DSA scheme to provide security prediction in real-time for load profiles of different seasons in presence of …
