PMU Applications Requirements Test Framework: An Open Source Code

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) performance changes among instrument models and the data delivered to the applications may vary widely in quality. To date, there is not a clear understanding of how problems that develop in the data process path may affect the performance of synchrophasor applications. To assess the severity of these problems, we need a simulation platform capable of modeling the entire data process. The basic idea is to model and to simulate PMU measurements in presence of dynamic events in the electrical network, for then to study application's performance when different kinds of impairments are applied to the input signal. These impairments could include uncompensated effects from transformers, A/D converters, errors in the PMU estimation algorithms, problems with the communication channels, etc. The construction of such an experimental platform is under way at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In particular, in this work, we have designed and used this open source simulator to evaluate applications to perform modal analysis, state estimation, and generator model validation. For each application, different estimation techniques were tested: Prony's method, least squares and the extended Kalman filter, respectively. Finally, we analyze these results and we elaborate on the appropriateness of the requirements imposed by the present PMU standards.