PMU configuration for system dynamic performance measurement in large, multiarea power systems

Effective assessment of the dynamic performance of the power system requires wide-area information from properly distributed phasor measurement units (PMUs). However, to maximize the information content of the captured signals, the sensors need to be located appropriately, with due account given to the structural properties underlying the given system. In this paper, two numerical algorithms are proposed to achieve this goal. They aim to maximize the overall sensor response while minimizing the correlation among sensor outputs so as to minimize the redundant information provided by multiple sensors. The sensor responses of interest are the bus voltage magnitude, and the angle and frequency coherency indexes, which are estimated by means of a statistical sampling of power system response signals from a transient-stability program. Through the "successive addition" scheme, one of these algorithms easily incorporates mandatory locations such as tie-line busses and large generator step-up transformers. The proposed approaches are first illustrated on the Hydro-Quebec transmission grid and then on a 9-area/67-bus/23-machine test network designed with well-defined geographical boundaries and pre-specified weak interties between electrically coherent areas.