Estimating Clock Synchronization Correction Factor from Synchrophasor Phase Angle Drift

PMU vendors perform clock synchronization, time-disciplining, and phasor estimation using different methods, which can have a significant impact on the phasor data’s suitability for applications. GPS time stamps at 1 pulse per second are used as a reference to discipline the reported phasor estimates’ time stamps continuously. In the case of infrequent clock disciplining to this signal, angle drifts between different parts of the system can occur, posing issues to downstream applications. To address this issue, we propose a method for estimating clock synchronization correction factors to perform ex-post time-stamp correction for synchrophasor data from devices having irregular and infrequent clock disciplining. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated for a real-world time synchronization problem observed in synchrophasors from the Dominion Energy system.