Practical Experiences in Operationalizing WAMS in the Control Room

:The utility industry at large has made significant investments in deployment of production grade Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS) and synchrophasor technology in recent years with now well over 4,000 Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) globally. In North America alone, the US Smart Grid Investment Grants (SGIG) have resulted in a massive influx of installed Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) expanding from approximately 200 research-grade units to over 1,700 production-grade devices over the past five years. Some of early real-time PMU applications and visualization being deployed at utility and ISO control rooms worldwide include angular separation, oscillatory stability monitoring, islanding and/or disturbance detection applications.For several years, GE Grid Solutions has been involved in delivery and deployment of WAMS applications around the globe. While the industry-at-large, foresees the promise that synchrophasors and WAMS holds in modernizing the power grid, and shaping the generation Energy Management Systems, there are some common take-always from these early WAMS installations. This paper summarizes some of the common experiences, and what is being done to address the challenges in operationalizing the technology into the control room.