Optimization of phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)-based power system for better state-estimation performance

Present-day power systems are mostly equipped with conventional meters and intended for the installation of highly accurate phasor measurement units (PMUs) to ensure better protection, monitoring and control of the network. PMU is a deliberate choice due to its unique capacity in providing accurate phasor readings of bus voltages and currents. However, due to the high expense and a requirement for communication facilities, the installation of a limited number of PMUs in a network is common practice. This paper presents an optimal approach to selecting the locations of PMUs to be installed with the objective of ensuring maximum accuracy of the state estimation (SE). The optimization technique ensures that the critical locations of the system will be covered by PMU meters which lower the negative impact of bad data on state-estimation performance. One of the well-known intelligent optimization techniques, the genetic algorithm (GA), is used to search for the optimal set of PMUs. The proposed technique is compared with a heuristic approach of PMU placement. The weighted least square (WLS), with a modified Jacobian to deal with the phasor quantities, is used to compute the estimation accuracy. IEEE 30-bus and 118-bus systems are used to demonstrate the suggested technique.