PMU placement criteria for EPS state estimation

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are employed in EPS both to solve the local problems and to obtain a general picture of EPS state which is further used for solution of control problems. Placement of PMU for solution of the problems of the first group is very specific and is determined by individual features of the problems to be solved. To solve the problems of the second group, including state estimation problems, the universal methods are necessary to place PMUs and SCADA to provide the best properties of the state estimation problem, such as observability of the studied network, identifiability of bad data and accuracy of obtained estimates. Different methods of metering devices placement were offered to solve this problem. The paper suggests genetic algorithm (GA) for PMU placement. As criteria for PMU placement several criteria are used: absence of critical measurements and critical sets in the system, maximum quantity of measurements received as compared to the initial one, maximum accuracy of estimates, minimum cost of PMU placement, transformation of the network graph into tree. GA allows different PMU placement criteria to be combined. The proposed algorithm is validated by simulation.