A platform for wide area monitoring and control system ICT analysis and development

PMU-based Wide Area Monitoring and Control (WAMC) system is introduced to improve the monitoring of power grid across large geographic areas and control the grid using more efficient and smart applications. The performance of WAMC applications in real power system scenarios and impact of their supporting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on the data quality can be quantified and analyzed by pseudo-real co-simulation test beds. The purpose of this study is to propose and develop a WAMC testing platform to facilitate the real-time simulation of dynamic power grid, the ICT infrastructure that overlays the grid and WAMS applications. The platform consists of OPNET, a powerful communication network emulator, connected to a real-time power system simulator through virtualized PMU device. The end point stations such as Phasor Data Concentrator or PMU-based applications are also linked to the platform through OPNET's real-simulation gateway called SITL (System-In-The-Loop). To assess the performance of the platform architecture, a case study has been performed with five PMUs which collect the data from a power model and deliver to PMU-based mode-estimation application over a typical communication network. In this study, the results explicitly intend to quantify the effect of network protocols on data delay.