A new method for simultaneous optimal placement of PMUs and PDCs for maximizing data transmission reliability along with providing the power system observability

In the hierarchical structure of a wide area measurement system (WAMS), the measurements obtained by phasor measurement units (PMUs) in a local area are first submitted to the related phasor data concentrator (PDC), and then to the power system control center. In this paper, a new method for the optimal placement of PMUs as well as PDCs in local networks of a WAMS is proposed. This method minimizes the probability of failures in data transmission from PMUs to PDCs. In the proposed method, first it is assumed that PMUs are installed on all system buses. Then, the redundant PMUs will be omitted one after the other in a multi-stage procedure. The multi-stage elimination procedure is such that in each stage the arrangement of PMUs–PDC with the highest reliability will be kept. The IEEE 14-, 30-, as well as 118-bus test systems are used to demonstrate the proposed algorithm and to verify the results. In numerical simulations, the power system observability is treated in various conditions such as the base case, N − 1 condition and the case of considering the single line outage.

► We propose a new multi-stage elimination method for simultaneous optimal placement of PMUs and PDCs in a hierarchical structured WAMS.
► The objective of power system observability achievement is incorporated into the goal of maximizing the communication network reliability.
► Various contingencies such as the single measurement loss as well as the single line outage are also considered in the problem of power system observability achievement.
► The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated in different conditions.
► The method is applied to several IEEE standard test systems.