Optimal PMU placement for identification of multiple power line outages in smart grids

Placing appropriate numbers of PMUs is critical to collect phase angle data for best identifying multiple line outages in wide-area transmission system, because of high deployment costs. This work focuses on exploring the global optimal strategy of PMU deployment for maximizing the average identification capability of multiple line outages. Inspired by Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance, this paper proposes the closed-form mathematical model to describe the average identification capability of multiple simultaneous line outages. Using IEEE 14-bus system, the optimal trade-off between the average identification capability and the number of PMUs is characterized. The proposed model successfully portrays the statistical identification performance of multiple line outages. The numerical result shows that the global optimal PMU placement algorithm has higher average identification capability when compared to the random PMU placement algorithm.