Optimal phasor data concentrator installation for traffic reduction in smart grid wide-area monitoring systems

As one of the core components in wide-area monitoring systems (WAMS), phasor measurement units (PMUs) acquire highly accurate and time-synchronized phasor data at high frequency for smart grid monitoring, protection, and control. Despite the advantages of PMUs, they do generate much data and create a heavy burden on the communication network. One way of alleviating such burden is to install phasor data concentrators (PDC) across the power system to concentrate data generated by the PMUs. Although PDCs are expensive as well, this may still be a much cheaper and more practical option than building a high bandwidth network for WAMS. Therefore, it is very important to solve the optimal PDC installation problem so as to achieve a desired level of traffic reduction. This paper is the first to address this problem and we give solutions for the IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, and 57-bus systems.