Big data analytic empowered grid applications — Is PMU a big data issue?

With the proliferation of digital measurement devices, such as smart meter on the distribution systems and phasor measurement units on the transmission systems, power companies find themselves inundated with increasingly growing data and long for efficient tools and analytical techniques to identify, digest and utilize critical information to improve the efficiency and reliability of grid operations. Many power researchers believe that the PMU related power system analytics falls under the category of Big Data Science and are keen to apply typical technologies for solution, including machine learning, data mining, cloud based computation and so on. This paper explores the reason behind such presumption, challenges to deal with PMU data, and trends of analytical techniques.