INTRODUCTION TO PHASOR MEASUREMENT
UNIT
SHANTANU .D. DATAR 1MS17EE052
PRATIK .S. KHOT 1MS18EE408
PAVAN .K 1MS17EE037
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS
ABSTRACT
With the increasing growth of distributed
energy resources on the power grid, more
observability and control systems
will be needed to accurately monitor
power flow. Historically power has been
delivered in a unidirectional way but
now as the consumer can generate his own
power with the technologies such as PV the
the system has changed to bidirectional
System of power distribution. So
In this review paper, we will review
the term papers related to the phasor
measuring units which continuously
observe the distribution network, the
latest trends and overcoming the
data congestion the PMU and
also avoiding the power outages due to an
imbalance in the grid power
and demand And ensuring The perfect
match of the load and supply and
avoiding frequency imbalance.
INTRODUCTION
During previous years there was only
unilateral flow of power means the generating
stations were generating and the consumers
were consuming power but now a days due to
hybrid generation systems and mobile
generating stations the consumers are also
generating power and not only using it but also
feeding it into the grid to earn revenue and
also due to power industry deregulation,
expansion of the transmission and distribution
network, and increased applications of power
electronic makes the power system more
complex and make the estimation of power
system phasor and frequency more difficult.
For reliable and secure operation of the power
system, the estimation of power system
frequency and the magnitude of supply voltage
are highly desired under such conditions. How
to obtain information about power system
voltage and frequency more accurately and
efficiently. This becomes very important when
there is a common grid and maintaining the
same frequency in the entire grid becomes
very crucial. If this monitoring is not done this
may lead generators to go out of
synchronization and lead to complete blackout.
To overcome this problem,among all the latest
state of art one of the best solutions is to have
phasor measurement units, which could
provide the critical information for variety of
power system operation, protection and control
applications with the recent development of
phasor measurement units (PMUs), that can
provide real time phasor measurements of
voltages and currents, frequency, rate of
change of frequency, phase angles, real and
reactive power flows and other electrical
parameters. Previously for the protection
against frequency, magnitude and phase angle
mismatch microprocessor based symmetrical
component distance relay (SCDR) were used
but these relays were resulting in false tripping
of the circuit breaker due to no communication
between the entire power system and there
were no corrective measures taken by it.[5]
 COMPONENTS OF A PMU
Synchronization signals could be distributed
over any of the traditional communication
media currently in use in power systems. Most
communication systems, such as leased lines,
microwave, or AM radio broadcasts, place a
limit on the achievable accuracy of
synchronization, which is too coarse to be of
practical use Fiber optic links, where available,
could be used to provide high precision
synchronization signals, if a dedicated fiber is
Fig 1. A basic overview of PMU.
available for this purpose. The technique of
choice at present is the Navstar Global
Phasor representation of waveforms to solve
Positioning System (GPS) satellite
AC circuits was performed by german-
transmissions. This system is designed
Austrian electrical engineer and mathematician
primarily for navigational purposes, but it
Charles Proteus Steinmetz. A sinusoidal signal
furnishes a common-access timing pulse,
of known frequency is fully described by its
which is accurate to within 1 microsecond at
magnitude VM and angular position θ with
any location on earth. The system uses
respect to an arbitrary time reference by AC
transmissions from a group of satellites in
waveform can be given by v(t) = V cos(ωt + θ
nonstationary orbits at about 10,000 miles
).The phasor representation of this sinusoid is
above the earth's surface. For the accurate
given by V =V + jV = (V / 2)e. Where Vr, Vi
acquisition of the timing pulse, only one of the
are real and imaginary rectangular components
satellites needs to be visible to the antenna.
of the complex number Phasor value and
The antenna is small and can be easily
Vm/√2 is the r m s value of the signal V(t) and
mounted on the roof of a substation control
θ is the instantaneous phase angle relative to a
house. The experience with the availability
cosine function at nominal frequency 50 or 60
and dependability of the GPS satellite
Hz[2].
transmissions has been exceptionally good[6].

Fig 2. Phasor representation of a sinusoidal

wave.[2]
Fig 3.Block diagram of a single phase
The sinusoidal signal and its phasor is given in PMU[6].
Fig 2.
 The GPS receiver provides the 1
pulse-per-second (pps) signal, and a time tag,
which consists of the year, day, hour, minute,
and second. The time could be the local time,
or the UTC (Universal Time Coordinated).
The l-pps signal is usually divided by a
phase-locked oscillator into the required
number of pulses per second for the sampling
of the analog signals. In most systems being
used at present, this is 12 times per cycle of
the fundamental frequency. The analog signals
are derived from the voltage and current
transformer secondaries, with appropriate
anti-aliasing and surge filtering. The
microprocessor determines the direct sequence
indicator in accordance with the described
recursive algorithm, and the GPS
synchronization message is assigned to the
pointer as an identification marker along with
the sample number at the beginning of the
window. The calculated sequence of pointers,
one for each measurement of a positive
sequence, is collected in a message stream and
sent to a remote location. The message is sent
over a dial-up connection through a modem. A
480 baud channel can support phase stream
transmission every two to five cycles of the
fundamental frequency, depending on the
number of transmitted forward phases.[6][2].
APPLICATION
1. ​State Estimation​- The main purpose of PMU
and its evolution was mainly for the sake of
state estimation. State estimation means to
sample the system parameters (frequency,
relative phase angle and voltage) for a
stipulated time.
Also, it is not necessary that PMU must be
installed at all the nodes. The nodes at which
the PMU is installed are called observable
nodes and the nodes on which there are no
direct PMU connections are called
non-observable nodes. It is practically seen
that by analyzing the data from the observable
nodes, very close approximations of the state
estimation measurements can be done[5].
2. ​Control​- The next obvious application of the
modern PMU is to control the power quality
and power system. This is done by acquisition
of the data through static state estimation and
then transferring the data to the system
controller. The controller takes the required
action and hence modern PMU has a vital role
to play in control of the power system[5][8].
Fig 4. Communication and control scheme of
PMU[10]
3. ​Instability Prediction​- PMU not just
measures the state of the power system but
also has tools that can confidently predict the
future state to a range of about 1 second. PMU
with the help of a data acquisition system can
monitor previous system states and hence with
the present states and the derivatives of
different orders can be obtained. As the system
parameters from different nodes can be
obtained with timestamps, it is very much
possible to predict the future state of the
system and the future transients by analyzing
the present states and their derivatives from
different locations. This was not possible in
the previous technologies as there was no such
connectivity and communication speed[4].
 The calibrations and testing of a PMU are
handled by a mathematical model called Test
Equation. A test equation is given by (2)
wk(y) = 0. (2)
The analysis of test equation fluctuations is the
core of measurement validation and is given
by (2)
|wk(y)|< d (3)
The value of the threshold for the j-th TE d j is
determined as (4)

Fig 5. An illustration of prediction[4]. d​j =

​ γα ×
√ ( ∑ aij σ2i )
i∈ωj
(4)

ERRORS IN PMU where ω j is a set of measurements entering the

The main application of any Wide Area
Measurement System(WAMS) is State
Estimation(SE). State Estimation of an Electric
power system can be defined as the calculation
of the system parameters based on
measurements. So the measurements of a
PMU are complex values of voltage and
current at nodes and are given by U= Ur + Ui.
So we know that ideal measurement also
called True value are the measurements with
zero error and hence obviously are Ideal. And
the practical measurements are real-time
measurements with certain errors.
The measurement equation is given by(1)
y(t) = y true(t) +ξ (t) +b(t)+ c(t) (1)
So the y-true(t) is the ideal measurement and
y(t) is the practical measurement which is the
summation of ideal measurement along with
random errors ξ (t), gross error b(t) and
systematic error c(t) [7].
Systematic errors are the errors which arise
from the improper calibration. Examples of
systematic errors are input error, sensor error,
and signal transmission errors.
Gross error is due to careless handling and
lack of proper judgment. Random errors are
the errors in the system which cannot be
minimized, these errors seep into the system
due to unknown reasons.
j-th TE, σ2i is the variance of the
measurements, γα is inverse distribution
N(0,1), determined by the given probability of
bad data penetration in
the SE problem α ; aij are coefficients of TE
[9].
CHALLENGES IN PMU TECHNOLOGY
● IT (Information Service) for
cybersecurity issues and firewall
issues.
● Plant engineering to create installation
procedures and draw.
● Protection and maintenance of PMU
● If the PMUs are from different
manufacturers then there is a chance
that the communication between that
two PMUs doesn’t happen[1].
● If PMUs are from the different
manufacturer then there is a chance
that the methods and the algorithms
used for analysis and sampling data
can differ and hence can have different
output results[1].
● The cost of saving data is very high. It
is of order 4GB/day.[3].
CONCLUSION
From this paper, we have seen that
measurement of phasors with time tags from
different locations of a power system has a
great benefit in analyzing the faults and
protection of the system. We have also
discussed the major component in a basic
PMU. In the application discussed we have
seen how PMU is used for State estimation,
for control and protection and instability
prediction. We have also discussed the error
equation and the test equation used to calibrate
the PMUs. And finally, we have listed some of
the present challenges in the PMU technology.
REFERENCES
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[10] SlideShare, “Role of phasor measuring
unit in power system”, Published on Oct 3,
2015 [online]
Available:https://www.slideshare.net/HASEE
NAM/role-of-phasor-measuring-unit-in-power
-system