Principal component analysis based compression scheme for power system steady state operational data

Growing use of digital instruments in smart grids (SG) is resulting in the rapid increase of the measured data volume. In future SG, vast amount of data will be generated by smart meters, PMU based WAMS, SCADA and other monitoring devices. While research has been done to find suitable compression technologies to store power system disturbance and PMU data; there is lack of research on the storage of SCADA data which is basically steady state operational data of the grid. Presently, utilities store some important SCADA data for a limited period and then they either delete them or store them in unreliable manner (CD/DVD etc.). The investigations presented here explore the application of Principal Component Analysis based lossy compression technique for archiving the steady state operational data. Four important operational data - voltage, line flow, MW and MVAr generation are considered for the study. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated considering practical data pertaining to the Southern Regional Grid of India. The results illustrate the usefulness of the technique.