The impact of optical current and voltage sensors on phasor measurements and applications

The increased penetration of phasor measurements units (PMUs) in electric power grids have put to forefront issues related to quality of phasor data. Phasor measurements, because of their perceived inherent accuracies, are oftentimes used to benchmark the results of critical system monitoring functions such as state estimators. However, instrument transformers significantly impact the final accuracies of phasor data. This paper will quantify the impact of optical current and voltage sensors on the accuracies of phasor data and wide area control. By comparing these results with those of traditional instrument transformer we demonstrate the benefits of using optical measurement units to better the performance of PMUs and their wide area applications.