AbstractsComputer Science

Optimal Substation Coverage for Phasor Measurement Unit Installations

by Chetan Mishra




Institution: Virginia Tech
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Degree: MS
Year: 2015
Keywords: PMU placement; substation oriented approach; binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO)
Record ID: 2061764
Full text PDF: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-12112014-150336/


Abstract

The PMU has been found to carry great deal of value for applications in the wide area monitoring of power systems. Historically, deployment of these devices has been limited by the prohibitive cost of the device itself. Therefore, the objective of the conventional optimal PMU placement problem is to find the minimum number devices, which if carefully placed throughout the network, either maximize observability or completely observe subject to different constraints. Now due to improved technology and digital relays serving a dual use as relay & PMU, the cost of the PMU device itself is not the largest portion of the deployment cost, but rather the substation installation. In a recently completed large-scale deployment of PMUs on the EHV network, Virginia Electric & Power Company (VEPCO) has found this to be so. The assumption then becomes that if construction work is done in a substation, enough PMU devices will be placed such that everything at that substation is measured. This thesis presents a technique proposed to minimize the number of substation installations thus indirectly minimizing the synchrophasor deployment costs. Also presented is a brief history of the PMU and its applications along with the conventional Optimal PMU placement problem and the scope for expanding this work.