Determination of optimal PMU placement for fault-location observability

This paper presents a new method to find minimum number of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), to determine the fault locations on transmission network lines in a power system. Considering the installation cost of PMUs, it is important to investigate the placement scheme of the PMUs at minimal locations on the network in the sense that the fault location observability can be achieved over the entire network. In this paper a new algorithm is introduced to find an optimization problem for determining the place and minimum number of PMUs in order to find accurate place of any fault in power systems. The accuracy of suggested algorithm is independent from the fault type and its resistance. Optimization problem is solved by branch and bond method. 41-bus 230kV Tehran Transmis sion Regional Electric Network is used as a real case study.