Verifying interoperability and application performance of PMUs and PMU-enabled IEDs

This paper presents a new test methodology for verifying the interoperability and application performance of PMUs and PMU-enabled IEDs at the device and system level. Two types of tests are defined to evaluate the performance of synchrophasor devices from two different aspects: design and application. The interoperability between PMUs, time synchronization options, and phasor data concentrators (PDCs) can be verified by design test methodology. A fault location algorithm using two-end synchronized measurements is used to evaluate the application performance. A reference PMU algorithm and synchrophasor system test set-up have been developed to perform the tests. Nine commercial PMUs and four GPS receivers with different synchronization options are selected to perform the tests. The test results are summarized at the end.