PMU Placement Based on Heuristic Methods, when Solving the Problem of EPS State Estimation

Creation of satellite communication systems gave rise to a new generation of measurement equipment – Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU). Integrated into the measurement system WAMS, the PMU sensors provide a real picture of state of energy power system (EPS). The issues of PMU placement when solving the problem of EPS state estimation (SE) are discussed in many papers. PMU placement is a complex combinatorial problem, and there is not any analytical function to optimize its variables. Therefore, this problem is often solved by the heuristic optimization methods. Depending on the chosen set of sensors (SCADA&PMU; only PMU; PMU placement based on the concept of depth of unobservability), one can obtain no less than 3 different variants of placing PMUs for one and the same system. The paper describes the PMU placement criteria suggested by the authors to solve the SE problem. Among them: improvement of bad data detection, maximum accuracy of estimates, transformation of the system graph into a tree, maximum number of measurements to be added, PMU placement during the decomposition of the power system SE problem. It is shown that the correct selection of PMU placement criteria can improve the solutions to these problems.