Optimal Placement of Phasor Measurement
with GPS Receiver
Ki-Seen Cho Joong-Rin Shin
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Konkuk University,
jrs~in@ kk;cc.konkuk.ac.kr
Abstract
This paper presents a study on optimal placement of Phasor
Meammnent Unik@MU) with Global Positioning System(GR3)
receivemformoreaccuratemonitoringof a powersystem.The optimal
PMU Ptacement(OPP)problem k+ in gener@ trip- as a
combinatorialoptimizationproblem snbjeeted to the observabtity
constraintsof the studiedpowersysterqwhicheomumesmnehtimeto
solve Thrveapproaeh~ in thispaper,areproposedaimingat mdueiug
computationalburdenin OPPproblems.
~i Modified%ndated AnneaEr@MSA)meth~ is p-
Conventionalsimulatedannealingmethedis slightlymodifiedin settiag
the iubialtempemtureand in coolingprocedureto considerthe enrrent
state of solution sets. fkcon~ Direct Combination(DC)method is
snggwkdusinga simplebut veryeffectiveheuristicruk Whenseleeting
test and neighboringsolution~ this heuristicrule is used to select
mast et%etivesets m the observabtitysenm And the last one is Tabu
Search(TS)meth~ m wbieb the heuristicruleused in DC methodis
alsousedto redumthe warehingspaceseffectively.
Sngg6ted optimizationmethodsareappli@ in thispaper,to solve
OPP problemsin IEEE 14, 30 and 57 bus system The simulation
resultsshowthattheproposedmethodscanfmdtheoptimalsolutionsin
an effkientmanner.
Key Words : Phmor MeasurementUnib&MU), Optimal Pbasor
Pkement(OPP) pmblerq Modified Sited Annealir@MSAJ
D- Combination(DC)method,Tabu Seareh(TS)method.
I. INTRODUCTION
It is a prerequisite, for an efficient and accurate control, to know
exact vahres of state variables of the controlled system. However,
unfortunately, the exact state variables cannot be obtained in an
electrical pwer system, because of its complexity in its stmchrre
and largeness in its scale. Recently, GPS, abbreviation of Global
Positioning System, is paid great attention among many engineering
areas including power system control and monitoring[12,3]. It is
beeause the time difference due to a long distance can be overcome
to a considerable degree of accuracy in syucbmnimtion by use of the
GPS. In other words, many problems arisen fkom the largeness of a
power system can be settled by use of GPS down.
Reeently, a Phasor Measurement Unit(PMU) equipped with a
GPS is widely applied in power system monitoring and state
estimation problems. Since a GPS provides neghgible
synchronization error, the interests are concentmted on where and
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Units
Seung Ho Hyun
Seoul, Korea Korea Railroad Research Inst., Anvang
._. Citv, Korea
shhyun @ krri.re.kr
how many PMU’S should be implemented to a power system with
smallest cost and with kwgest degree of observability, saying
Optimal PMLJ Plaeement(OPP).
In the Baldwin’s pionecxing work[4], an OPP problem was
solved by use of simulated annealing methcd, which is apt to he
suffered fi-om exeessive calculation burden if applied to a large
power system. Furthermore, if a fault occurs in a bus with PMU
equip@, the observability may be broken. Many interesting works
have been qmted, each of which has its own advantages and
shortcornings[4,6,9, 10].
In this paper, three optimization schemes are prop+ to obtain
OPP solutions with less calculation effort and with higher robustness
level. In the fimt step, in chapter 2, the OPP problem is fonnrdated.
Then, the state estimation concept is reviewed in case PMU’s with
GPS are used and observability check scheme descriked by which
the constraint is checked in optimization procedne. From chapter
three to five, three optimization algorithms are proposed, modified
simulated annealing, direct combination and tabu search algorithm,
respectively. In chapter 6, these algorithms are applied to OPP
problems in IEEE 14-bus, 30bus and 57-bns systems. The
Performances are illustrated and compared with that of a
conventional method, which shows the proposed schemes find the
solutions more efficiently.
IL PROBL~ FORMULATION
2.1 Objectivefinctions
The OPP problem is to determine the minimum number and
the optimal kxation of PMU’S awning observability and
redundancy. In the observability sense, it is reasonable that the
minimum number of unobservable bus means maximum degree of
observability. The redundancy is considered to the degux of
maintaining observability under the contingency on one PMU bus.
These concepts are formulated to objective functions as follows;
‘l=m:[m:n’(p (1)
where g(p,$ is the number of unobservablebuses,p is the numberof PMU’s
and S is the PMU allocation sec.
J2 =
s.t.
‘:
{“
‘; R(s(p))
Observability(S(p))= 1
(2)
258
258
 where Observability(S)is an observability measure of the set S, /’ ‘\
which is defiened to be ‘O’ if S in unobservable and to be ’1’ if
/ \
observable. R is the redundancy measure.
I
2.2 Observability d Phasor Estimation Model “~ti ,
.....................i ....... .............................
The observability of a system can be decided through either
Jacobian matrix analysis or topological analysis.In this paper, I
~vw+a
incidence matrix is used for observability analysis, which is based on ....................... ............... .......... ................ ......

% /1
topological sense. It is kecause this methcd is a much faster and “.

.\.\\......
\: ‘.

.-..............
convenient way than matrix analysis[5,6,7]. Now, let’s consider a
simple way how we can make out the observability of a power ...........[’.......
1-
system. /
“

--- .-”
Siice a PMU equipped with a GPS measures the state variables
~+
of a power system in a precisely synchronized manner, the /

COVCWWd the usrrsnt pkscemmt set

synchronization error due to the long distance between measuring
devices is smaUenough to be ignoti. Therefore, it can be supposed Fig. 1. Example of ‘Levels of measurement’
that the measurement error in a measuring device is caused by its
own accuracy range, which is neglected, in this paper, for -1
0
11
convenience. Then, we can obtain some of the state vectom
unmeasured with simple algebraic calculations.
Yxc
Suppose there are nv buses and n, transmission lines
whose voltage or current phasors are measured. Then, the measured
VM
,1
variable vector can be represented as;
(5)
Vc
z= [Zv z,]’ (3)
For a mm-injection bus, the pseudo-measurement level can be
where, Zv and Z, are the voltage and the cummt pha.sorswhose
extended as follows;
dimensions are nv x 1 and n, x 1, respectively.
There is a relation between the PMU-equi@ bus and its
adjacent bus as follows;

where PZV is the pseudo-voltage phasor of MACS around

the zero injection bus and VMAis the voltage phasor of MACS,
which has the same value as PZV . And Vz is the voltage phasor
where, VM is the voltagephasor vector measured through PMU’S
of the mo injection bus. YW and YZCrepresent the admittance
and V=is the voltage phasor vector of the neighkaing buses. Let’s
matrix of zero injection bus and its adjacent buses respectively.
define a set whose elements are the buses connected to one specific
In sho~ by implementing a PMU on a bus, the state variables
bus as the Minimal Adjacent Cut Set(MACS) of that bus. Then the
can be calculated almost exactly to pseudo measurement level.
dimension of Y’c is the same as the number of elements in
Furthermore, this can be extended to zero injection level, saying
MACS’S of PMU-buses. Y,. and Y,c represent the admittance
extended pseudo measurement level. This means that the
matrices of the PMU buses and their neighborhoods respectively.
observability can be much impmved and that the state variables can
It is convenient to classify tie buses, from the meaning
be easily estimated. The observability is checked in a simple way.
device’s view poin~ into seveml level$ the buses with PMU’S are
FirsL define values to the buses according to their measurement
defined to be in ‘measurement level’, the buses comected dkctly to
levels, e.g. 3 for measurement level and 5 for pseudo mea,mement
the buses in measurement level are defined to be in ‘pseudo
level and others. Then add this values to the element of the incident
measurement level’. The state variables can be expressed by using
matrix for every EMU’s. Finally, we can guess how many PMU’S
(4) by simple matrix inversion. However, in case any of the state
contribute to estimate the state variables of a bus or line concerned.
variables of a bus is calcukitcd by two or more PMU’S, the
This is a very simple and powerful methcd to identify the
admittance mati is not invertable. In this case, the pseudo-invene
observability and redundancy in the topological sense.
matrix is used to compute the state variables as given in (5).
In this section, the optimization problem was defined and the
observability checking scheme was introduced. The proposed
optimization methods will lx described in the next three sections.

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 III. MODIFIED SIMULATRD ANNEALING(MSA)
METHOD
Simulated annealing method is a very famous way to find
solutions in many kinds of optimization problems. However, in spite
of its ability to find the global solution in most cases, thcxe is a week
point: it may need too much time in finding solutions. That’s why
many efforts have been placed on reducing calculation time. In this
paper, three rncdtications were made on conventional SA methcxi.
FirsL in setting the initial tenqmmne, the unobservable buses
are considered as the variance of the temperature function as follows.
TO== (7)
log(P)
where o, is the variance of numbers of unobservable buses. If
o, is bigger, which means that it is far horn the optimal point, the
energy variation between transient should be larger. P is the
probability of taking the solution of the previous step.
Second, the cooling schedule is derived as a sigmoid function.
1
T~+l= x T. (8)
(1+ exp(-0.5xcr2))
where Oz is the variance of the objective function variation in a
specific temperature. In (8), itisclear that the temperature deaase
becomes larger as cr, becomes small. Since small cr, implies
that it is near steady state, it is needed to speed up the convergence.
‘he third modification is that in constructing anew test sec the
number of PMU’s are selected form different rules according to the
previous solutions by following rule;
Num.of PMU in TestSet
=~”[Mean{ Mid(upper,lower), kmw}]
mt
In a conventional stndy[4], the number of PMU’S in new test set is
determined by multiplying a coefficient existing from 0.85 to 0.95 to
the number of previous solution. In this paper, the variation of PMU
nurnkr decreases as the number of PMU’S decreases, which shows
excellent acceleration effect in many cases.
IV. DIRECT COMBINATION METHOD
The DC method is proposed to avoid time consuming feature
of random search, such as SA method, by adding heuristic rides, in
this paper.
The observability can be highly guaranteed if we consider the
buses in the order of the numbers of branches connected to them
when we conshuct the test solution set. Moreover, in selecting the
neighboring solution se~ which is a step to move one PMU fkom a
bus to another among the test solution set, it can be shown to be
effkctive if we consider a bus with smaller number of branches first.
This heuristic and simple idea makes it possible to reduce the search
space drastically compared with SA method.
Suppose the total number of buses and total number of PMU’S
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in the initial solution set are N and K respectively. Now, consider the
case a test set is to Ee constructed with M PMU’S, then, the total
number of test sets is ~ C(K.M, . In addition, the neighbor solution
sets can be obtained by simple calculation as (N – M ) X M .
Then, the number of possible solutions is;
Kc (K-M)x{(N-M)x M}. (lo)
Among them+ the effective selection can be made by the
following n.de, as mentioned abovq
● When mnoving a PMU from a bus, consider the bus having
least branches timt. When adding a PMU to a bu+ consider
the bus having most branches first.
This heuristic rule enables early termination of each searching
step with the detived solution sets satisfying observability condition.
V. TABU SEARCH(TS) METHOD
TS method is another search method to find the optimal
solution[8]. The concept of TS methcd is to use experiences and
oblivion of human beings.
It is clear that the performances will be much improvd if we
can use the data that we have experienced before. These data sets,
more precisely ‘the solution sets consideti in the pmious steps’,
are preserved in, so called, the ‘tabu lists’ in TS algorithm. Once a
solution vector is put to the tabu list it will never lx considered
aftenvads, because we have calculated the values of objective
function with them and we remember it The length of taboo list, i.e.
the duration of memory is also an impn-tant factor affecting the
performance of this algorithm. Too shofi memory length implies
slow convergence due to duplicated search. If it is too long, it may
diverge because there is too few possible solutions remained. The
length of tabu list is determined through trial and error in this paper
The heuristic seamh used in DC method is added, in this paper,
to speed up the convergence. It was shown that this simple rule
reduces calculation time considerably.
In addition, some solutions in tabu list can be selected again,
which is possible by defining ‘aspiration criteria’[9,10]. The stop
criterion is defined such that a solution from which the number of
PMU’S does not decrease anymore, at the same time, the
redundancy is not improved. Since the most possible solution sets
are considered with tit priority by the heuristic rule, tbe iteration
number has no meaning in stopping criterion.
VI. CASE S~Y
The proposed appmches are applied to the OPP problems on
IEEE 14 bus, 30 bus and 57 bus systems. The initial states m
derived considering zero injexlion buses. Three different methcds
yielded same results in each power system.
6.1 Setting the initial condition
In geneml, how to set the initial condition is of great imptance
because the optimization result or performance time is seriously
dependent on it. The initial conditions, in this pqxr, are selected as

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 ,- .,
1011OWS; The ptqxxed methods aR applied to the OPP problems in
i) Chcose a bus with the largest number of branches connected and IEEE st&&t-d power systems to show their effectiveness.
put a PMU. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms fmd the
ii) Identify measurable area including psettd~ or extended pseudo- solutions in much smaller search spaces than previous works. The
measttrable level. Mure works should include the consideration of loss of&@ affect
iii)If the sum of measurable areas does not cover whole the studied of severe faults and changes in topology of the studied power system.
network, do i) for the unobservable buses. If it does, end the
procedure
There is no limit on the number of PMU’s in setting the initial APPENDIX: SIMULATION REXJIXS
condition. The above mentioned method provides considerably
advantageous starting points

6.2 Simulation resuhs

● EEE 14 bus svstem
There is only one zero injection bus, bus 7, which was taken
into consideration in setting initial PMU allocation as mentioned
above. In start, there are 5 PMU’S, however, after optimizadon
procedure completed, it is shown that only 3 PMU’S are needed with
the observability condition satisfied.
An interesting thing is that the objective fitnction .J1which is to
trtinimim the unobservable buses with minimum number of PMU (a) Initial PMU placement
and J? which maximi= redundancy nuder given observability
condition has given rise to the same tesuks as given in the figure
below. The redundancy of this system is 2.
. IEEE 30 bus svstem
The results are basically similar to those of IEEE 14 bus system.
The number of PMU’s is reduced from 11to 7. The redundancy is 5.
. IEEE 57 bus svstem
There ate 15 zero-injextion buses in this power system. Even if
the result of each proposed method is different tim one another,
each solution has the same nttmker of PMU’S and the same degree
of mdttndancy. Initially 16 PMU’S are needed, which is reduced to (b) Opti PMU placement
13 PMU’S after the optimization. Fig. Al. Optimal PMU allocation in IEEE 14 bus system.
The simulation results are given in figure Al, A2, and A3 in
Appendix.

6.3Analysis of solutions
As predicted, the numbers of PMU’s, in each studied system as
the solution sets are the same from one method to another. However,
the calculation times are not. In table 1, the number of search spaces
in the proposed methods and in a conventional method[4]. The
number of searching spaces has close relations to the performance
time needed in the optimization ptwedttre. Even a glance can reveal
that the proposed methcds improve dliciency very much. The (a) Initial PMU placement
results are tabulated in table Al in Appendix.
23 25“-G
““”Q-””

j%!!
VII. CONCLUSIONS 14
19 ... 20 22

16 . .. 17 0 21

In this paper three methods for OPP problems are suggested.

i) Modified Sitrtulated Attnealing(IvISA) methcd in which the 13
o“” 9.,,

current state can be considered to speed up the convergence. 3 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . ~ . . ~8 , ~.

ii)Direct Combination(DC) method using a simple heuristic rule in

order to reduce the searching spaces with observability guaranteed. , . . . ..-b ,,,/...

iii)Tabu Search(TS) method to xcxiuce the search space with the (b) mtima PMU placement
same rule as used in DC method applied. Fig. A2. Optimal PMU allocation in IEEE 30 bus system.
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 Systems, Vol. 5, pp. 1001-1009, August 1990
[6] E.D.Crainic et al, “Power Network Observability The
assessment of the Measurement System Strength”, IEEE
Transactions on Power systems, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.1267-1285,
November 1990
[7] G.R.Krumpholz, K.A.Clements, and P.W.Davis, “Power System
Observability : A practical algorithm using network tqmlogy”,
fEJ3E Transactions on Power Apparatus and System+Vol. PAS-99,
pp. 1534-1542, Jdy/April 1980
[8] F&l Glover and Manuel LagttnA 1997, T&u search Kluwer
(a) Initial PMU placement Academic Publishers, pp. 1-91.
[9] Hiroyuki Mori, Yasuyttki Sone, “Tabu Search Based Meter
Placement for Topological Observability in Power System State
Estimation”, Puxeedings of the 1999 IEEE Transmission and
Distribution Conference, Vol.1, pp.172-177, 1999.4.11
[lO]Hiroyttki Men, Osamu Matsuzaki, “A Tabu Search Based
K+?q Approach to Meter Placement in Static State Estimation”, Intelligent
System Application to Power Systems(ISAP99), pp.365-369, April
37‘“06 4-8, 1999, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
:“~’(.*” 4’
““”
-- .......... @:
9 BIOGRAPHIES
~A
‘“””::~+,a
Ki-Seen Cho was born in Kwangju, Korea,
(b) optimal PMU placement on January 26, 1968. He received the B.E. and
Fig. A3. Optimal PMU allocation in IEEE 57 bus system. M .S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from
the Konkuk University, Korea, in 1995 and
1998 respectively. He is currently working
Table Al. Comparison of numbers of search spaces. toward his Ph.D. degree in Electrical
Engineering from Konkuk University. His
research interests include power system
14-bus 30-bus 57-bus
Method analysis, pow er system monitoring, and
application of synchronized phasor measure-
Baldwin[4] KX3(IC9 .......----.-
KX,4C4 ............ KX57G5 ments based on GPS.
(K=O.002X30) 60.6 858.429 1.3234E12
MSA 1,200 17,010 94,500 Joong-Rin Shin was born in Seoul, Korea,
on September 10, 1949. He received the B.E.,
Dc I 200 I 9,680 I 23,760 I M .S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
from the Seoul National University, Korea, in
Proposed TS 35 300 337 1977, 1984, and 1989 respectively. Since
1990, he has been with the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Konkuk University in
REFERENCES Seoul, Korea, where currently is a professor.
His major research field is power system
[1] Zhang Wentao, aiu Yufeng, Zheng Xujnn, Wu Ye, “The analysis, power system planning and
Implementation of Synchronized Phasor Measurement and Its reliability evaluation, and power system
Applications in Power system”, Proceedings of the International engineering education tools.

Conference on Electrical Engineering, vol. 1, PP.139-143, 1996

[2] Robert O. BttrnelLJr.,Marc M. Butts, Patrick S. Sterlirm “Power
System Applications for Phasor Measurement Units”, IEEE
Computer Applications in Power, VO1.7,No.1, pp.8-13, January
1994
[3] A.G. Phadke, “Synchronized Phasor Measurements in Power
Systems”, IEEE Computer Applications in Power, VO1.6,No. 2, pp.
10-15, April 1993
[4] TL.Baldwin, L.Mili, M.B.Boisen, R.Adap~ “Power System
Observability With Minimal Phasor Measurement Placement”,
JEEE Transaction on Power Systems, Vol. 8, pp. 707-715, May
1993
[5] Rong-Liang, “A Fast Integer Algorithm For Observability
Analysis Using Network Topology”, IEEE Transaction on Power
Seuug-Ho Hyun was born in Seoul, Korea,
in 1962. He received the B.E., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from
the Seoul National University, Korea, in 1991,
1993, and 1996 respectively. Since 1996, be
has been working in Korea Railroad Research
Institute, as a principle researcher and systems
engineer. His major research field is power
system control, intelligence control and
systems engineer of a large scale systems tike
power systems and high speed Train systems.
ACKNOWLEDGME~
This work was suppmted by No. 97-O1O1QO1-3 from the Korea
Science and Engineering Foundation.

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