Multistage PMU placement scheduling for robust state estimation in power systems

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) play a significant role in modern and future power grids. Since these advanced devices can provide accurate synchronous voltage phasor measurements, more robust power system state estimation (SE) can be achieved by using PMU measurements. The optimal PMU placement problem has been well investigated already in the literature. However, due to the financial and also physical constraints, PMUs are deployed in a multistage manner. This paper presents a novel staged PMU placement scheduling to maximize the number of protected system states in state estimation before full system observability is achieved. While traditional staged placement methods maximize the power system observability, the proposed novel method can provide protection for a larger number of system states in intermediate stages. The proposed method is tested using IEEE test systems. The simulation results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed method compared with the traditional multistage placement algorithm.