Co-Optimal Placement of PMUs and Their Communication Infrastructure for Minimization of Propagation Delay in the WAMS

The phasor measurement unit (PMU) has evolved as an indispensable tool for real-time monitoring and control of the power system, thereby leading to its large-scale deployment in a wide-area measurement system (WAMS). Communication system plays a significant role for transferring measured real-time PMU data to the phasor data concentrator (PDC) for monitoring and control purposes. The propagation delay depends on the spatial position of the PMUs with respect to the PDC and the communication network. This paper deals with the problem of co-optimal placement of PMUs and their communication infrastructure for minimization of propagation delay in a WAMS. The novelty of the work is to explore the feasibility of microwave communication technology as an alternative to the existing fiber-based communication infrastructure in the WAMS. The proposed approach takes the link reliability and the geographical topological variations into consideration for the placement of the microwave links so as to minimize the propagation delay. The merit of the microwave communication technology in the framework of the WAMS is evaluated in terms of its cost and reliability. Simulation results and the propagation delay evaluations for the Eastern power grid of India validate the efficacy of the proposed approach in practical field applications.