An optimal PMU placement method for power system observability

Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is considered to be the most significant device in future power system measurements. It provides phasor information (both magnitude and phase angle) which can be used in the real time control of power systems. In this paper, optimal PMU placement problem (OPP) is articulated as a binary integer linear programming (BILP) using Balas additive algorithm (BAA). PMU installations will be decided by binary decision variables (0, 1) for full network observability while minimizing the number of PMU installations. Existence of zero injection buses was also considered to reduce the number of PMUs used for observability. Power system connectivity matrix represented in binary form and simple heuristics are used to solve the problem. Optimal PMU placement problem has multiple solutions with equal costs. For further ranking of these multiple solutions measurement redundancy is used. The proposed algorithm has been tested on IEEE 9-bus, 14-bus, 24-bus, 30-bus systems.