Overview on Synchrophasors Technology and Trend of their Application in Electrical Network Protection

Due to the complexity and increasing challenges faced in today’s power system because of the increasing demand in electrical energy, integration of renewable energies and other distributed energy resources, highly responsive and more reliable tools granting outstanding system observability are required. However, the recent advances in control, sensing, computation, and satellite communication technologies, the use of the global positioning system (GPS) providing users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services, as well as the development of time-stamped measurement technology (SMT), are enormously contributing in making the real-time system monitoring possible. In addition, the recently developed phasor measurement units (PMU) which can provide 30 to 120 timetagged measurements per second increases the proper system observability. This work explores and reviews the synchrophasor technology and the trend of its applications in power system protection and their contribution in bridging the existing gap in protection, control, and monitoring of the Power system.