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Phasor Measurement Unit

Introduction
As the electric power grid continues to expand and as transmission lines are
pushed to their operating limits, the dynamic operation of the power system
has become more of a concern and has become more difficult to accurately
model. In addition, the ability to effect real-time system control is developing
into the need to prevent wide scale cascading outages.
For decades, control centers have estimated the state of the power system
(the positive sequence voltage and angle at each network node) from
measurements of the power flows through the power grid. It is very desirable
to be able to measure the system state directly and/or augment existing
estimators with additional information.
Alternating Current (AC) quantities have been analyzed for over 100 years
using a construct developed by Charles Proteus Steinmetz in 1893, known as
a phasor. On the power system, phasors were used for analyzing AC
quantities assuming a constant frequency. A relatively new variant of this
technique that synchronizes the calculation of a phasor to absolute time has
been developed2, known as synchronized phasor measurement or
synchrophasors. In order to uniformly create and disseminate these
synchronized measurements, several aspects of phasor creation had to be
codified
.
Phasor
Phasor is a quantity with magnitude and phase (with respect to a reference)
that is used to represent a sinusoidal signal (figure below). Here the phase or
phase angle is the distance between the signals sinusoidal peak and a
specified reference and is expressed using an angular measure. Here, the
reference is a fixed point in time (such as time = 0). The phasor magnitude is
related to the amplitude of the sinusoidal signal.




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Phasor technology
Phasor technology is considered to be one of the most important
measurement technologies in the future of power systems due to its unique
ability to sample analog voltage and current waveform data in synchronism
with a GPS-clock and compute the corresponding 60 Hz phasor component
(i.e. complex numbers representing the magnitude and phase angle of a 60
Hz sinusoidal waveform) from widely dispersed locations (see figure). This
synchronized sampling process of the different waveforms provides a
common reference for the phasor calculations at all the different locations.


The phase angle differences between two sets of phasor measurements (i.e.
d1-d2) are independent of the reference. Typically, one of the phasor
measurements is chosen as the reference and the difference between all the
other phase angle measurements (also known as the absolute phase angle)
and this common reference angle is computed and referred to as the relative
phase angles with respect to the chosen reference (see figure below).


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The time synchronization is important Through the use of integral
GPS receiver-clocks, PMUs sample synchronously at selected locations
throughout the power system. This provides a system-wide snapshot of the
electrical system. The GPS not only provides time tagging for all the
measurements but also ensures that all phase angle measurements are
synchronized to the same time as well.

Figure 6 shows how time skews in the measurement and analysis process
can induce errors in the phase angle difference computations. Here, the
phase angle difference between two sets of measurements was
approximately 10 degrees. However, when one of these two phase angle
signals was skewed by 1 second and then the phase angle difference was
computed, then the resulting answer incorrectly indicated a phase angle
difference of approximately 5 degrees between those two data sets. Phasor
calculations demand greater than 1 millisecond accuracy.

Phasor network elements are The simplest form of phasor network
consists of TWO nodes; one Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) at node 1 that
communicates with one Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC) at node 2. Typically,
many PMUs located at various key substations gather data in real-time and
they are connected to a PDC at the utility center where the data is
aggregated. A personal computer, connected to the output of the PDC
provides the users with software, such as RTDMS that calculates and
displays locally measured frequencies, primary voltages, currents, MWs and
MVARs for system operators. Additionally, many PDCs belonging to different
utilities can also be connected to a common central PDC (a.k.a., SuperPDC)
to aggregate data across the utilities to provide an Interconnection-wide
snapshot.

Definition of Phasor Monitoring Unit (PMU)
A PMU is an electronic device that uses state-of-the-art digital signal
processors that can measure 50/60Hz AC waveforms (voltages and currents)

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typically at a rate of 48 samples per cycle (2880 samples per second). The
analog AC waveforms are digitized by an Analog to Digital converter for each
phase. A phase-lock oscillator along with a Global Positioning System (GPS)
reference source provides the needed high-speed synchronized sampling with
1 microsecond accuracy. Additionally, digital signal processing techniques are
used to compute the voltage and current phasors

Line frequencies are also calculated by the PMU at each site. This method of
phasor measurement yields a high degree of resolution and accuracy. The
resultant time tagged phasors can be transmitted to a local or remote receiver
at rates up to 60 samples per second.


PMUs come in different sizes. Some of the larger ones can measure up to 10
phasors plus frequency while others only measure from one to three phasors
plus frequency. The approximate cost of the larger PMUs can range in the
$30 to $40 thousand of dollars while the smaller ones cost considerably less.

PMU installation and connection
Installation of a typical 10 Phasor PMU is a simple process. A phasor will be
either a 3 phase voltage or a 3 phase current. Each phasor will, therefore,
require 3 separate electrical connections (one for each phase). We are talking
about 6 wires per phasor 2 for each phase of either voltage or current. The
PMU will also measure the line frequency from a specific voltage phasor
(typically a major bus assigned by the user).

Typically an electrical engineer designs the installation and interconnection of
a PMU at a substation or at a generation plant. Substation personnel will bolt
equipment rack to the floor of the substation following established seismic
mounting requirements. Then the PMU along with a modem and other support
equipment will be mounted on the equipment rack. They will also install the
Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) antenna on the roof of the substation per
manufacturer instructions. The antenna signal cable will be connected to the
antenna and brought directly to the PMU. Substation personnel will also install
shunts in all Current Transformer (CT) secondary circuits that are to be
measured. Potential Transformer (PT) connections will not require the

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installation of any additional equipment other than terminal blocks and fuses.
They will have to run wires from the CT shunts and the PTs to either an
interface cabinet or directly to the input connections of the PMU (Figure 10).
Note: Each phasor (either Voltage or Current) will require three connections
one for each phase.

In addition to the CT and PT connections the PMU will also require the
following connections:
- Power connection typically from station batteries.
- Station ground connection.
- Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) antenna connection.
- Communication circuit connection (Modem if using 4-wire connection or
Ethernet for network connection).

After all the connections are made, the PMU is configured and tested. This
task is typically performed by a substation Test Technician.

The utilitys IT department will play a key role will the phasor data connections
phase of the PMU installation. After the entire input channel configuration and
testing is completed, the PMU is connected to the utilitys Phasor Data
Concentrator (PDC) via 4-wire Modem or Ethernet connection depending on
the bandwidth needs. They will also need to evaluate the need to install
additional communication equipment in order to provide the necessary circuit
connections between the PDC at the master site and the PC workstations at
the client sites.




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Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC)
A PDC forms a node in a system where phasor data from a number of PMUs
or PDCs is correlated and fed out as a single stream to other applications.
The PDC correlates phasor data by time-tag to create a system wide
measurement set. The PDC provides additional functions as well. It performs
various quality checks on the phasor data and inserts appropriate flags into
the correlated data stream. It checks disturbance flags and records files of
data for analysis. It also monitors the overall measurement system and
provides a display and record of performance. It can provide a number of
specialized outputs, such as a direct interface to a SCADA or EMS system.

Super Phasor Data Concentrator (SuperPDC)
Within a point-to-point phasor network architecture, the SuperPDC is simply a
central PDC that collects and correlates phasor data from all remote PDCs
and PMUs and makes it available to a visualization software package as
described above (Figure 11). Typically, the SuperPDC is also connected to a
central database for long-term archiving of the collected data



A SuperPDC should have the capability to do both if it is fast enough. The
obvious problem of locally storing ALL the data would be the need to employ
large disk drives and have a system in place to regularly transfer full disk
phasor data to DVD for permanent storage. A rate of 30 or 60 samples per
second fills up a disk drive very quickly.


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Kind of delays which can be expected in the real time stream
A PDC receives data streams from PMUs and other PDCs and correlates it in
real-time into a single data stream that is transmitted to a PC via an Ethernet
port. They propagation delays associated with communication links from a
PMU and PDC depend on the medium and the physical distance separating
these components. For a typical PMU with 10-12 phasors, the associated
delays for various communication mediums are summarized below.
Associated Delays with Various Communication Links
Communication Link Associated Delay one way (milliseconds)
Fiber-optic cables (50 Mbps 1 Gbps) 100-150
Digital microwave links 100-150
Power line (PLC) (upto 4 Mbps) 150-350
Telephone lines (upto 56 kbps) 200-300
Satellite link 500-700
In addition, the fixed delay associated with processing, concentrating,
multiplexing, and transducers, and is independent of the communication is 75
ms.

Finally, PDCs also have a maximum wait-time, typically of 1-4 seconds, to
allow for all the PMU data to come in before aggregated data is outputted by
the PDC. If the data from all the PMUs reach the PDC within this wait-time, it
outputs the aggregated data right away. However, in the extreme case that
the data from one of the PMUs is indefinitely delayed, then the PDC will wait
upto its pre-defined wait-time (i.e., 1-4 seconds) before the data is outputted
by the PDC. Hence, the PDC can also introduce an additional delay equal to
its wait-time if one of the PMU channels stops transmitting data to the PDC. In
such circumstances, if there are additional PDCs downstream in the point-to-
point phasor network architecture (such as the SuperPDC), then they too will
introduce a secondary delay equal to their wait-time.

Phasor applications such as Real-Time Dynamics Monitoring System
(RTDMS) are designed to directly integrate with the PDCs over the utilitys
high speed Local Area Network (100 Mbps) and display the data and
calculated individual engineering units such as MW, MVAR, etc. within 1
second of receiving the data from the PDC (Note: The Web based versions of
the RTDMS Clients, such as those deployed across the Eastern
Interconnection as part of the EIPP project, integrate over secure internet
connections rather than Local Area Networks and can longer to display the
information within its visualization screens).

Bottom Line: The total delay from when the data is captured by the PMU to it
being visualized within the RTDMS screens is typically a few seconds.

Type of data quality problems does one typically encounter
with such a system
There are two main types of problems associated with data validation: First,
there is a data loss problem associated with network problems such as
bandwidth limitations, collisions, misrouting, maintenance outages, and
equipment breakdown to name a few. There is not much one can do about
this other than to report it to IT for review and repair. The other problem is

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measurement data validation which has to do with obtaining inaccurate
information such as incorrect resistor shunts as well as incorrect CT and PT
rations. This also includes larger inaccuracies, such as 120, due to incorrect
wiring errors or labeling inconsistencies in what is called Phase A, Phase B
and Phase C across utilities. The latter type will take time to correct and may
have to involve station technicians at a particular site and even sometimes the
engineering department. If this data is also available through the SCADA
system the two values should be compared in order to achieve some degree
of validation.

Finally, each PMU vendor utilizes their own proprietary phasor computation
algorithms as well as pre and post processing filters, each with their own
unique design characteristics. These and other factors can result in adding
constant offsets to the phase angle measurements which may be more
significant at off-nominal operating frequencies. Figure 12 compares the
phase angle offsets of different PMUs over a wide frequency range about the
normal 60Hz operating frequency. As long as all the PMUs within the phasor
network are provided by the same vendor, this is not an issue; otherwise
these offset errors should be corrected.

Synchronized phasor measurement technology is relatively new,
and consequently several research groups around the world are actively developing
applications of this technology. It seems clear that many of these applications can be
conveniently grouped such as Power System Real Time Monitoring, Advanced
network protection, Advanced control schemes.
Fig.2. PMU layout with GPS time stamped signal


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Fig. 2 shows PMUs geographically dispersed to form a Wide Area Monitoring
System (WAMS) in which the PMUs deliver GPS time-tagged measurements to a
Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC). The PDC sorts the incoming phasor measurements
before signal processing converts PMU data into actionable information that can be
presented to an operator in the form of a Human Machine Interface (HMI). This HMI
provides an operator with critical information about the state of the power system.

PMU WORKING PRINCIPLE




Fig.2 : Basic block diagram of PMU


The Voltages and currents in their analog form are derived from the potential
and current transformer secondaries which are then fed to Anti-Aliasing filter.
The surge isolation stages have omitted in this block diagram although they
must be included in the practical measurement system meeting the
IEEE Surge Withstand Capability standard, C37.9 1


1- Anti-aliasing filter
As per Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, to reconstruct a signal after
sampling, sampling frequency must greater than twice the maximum
frequency of the signal to be sampled. If lower sampling rates are used then
the original signals information may not be completely recoverable from the
sampled signal and they may appear as aliases. So to avoid this effect, Anti-
aliasing filter is used which restricts the bandwidth of the signal to
approximately satisfy the sampling theorem, for the fixed sampling.

2-GPS


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Global positioning system is a satellite based navigation system which gives
information about location and time irrespective of weather conditions. It
consists of a network of 24 satellites orbiting in 6 geo-synchronous orbits such
that at any given instant 4 satellites are visible from any point on the earth
surface. GPS provides accurate information about location and time (could be
local time or Universal Time Coordinate) of the GPS receivers location. Along
with it satellite is capable of transmitting common access one pulse per
second with an identifier, which is accurate about 1s at any location on
earth. This pulse combined with time-tag is crucial for the application
considered here.


3- Phase locked oscillator

Usually in PMU, the pulse signals from the satellite are phase locked with the
sampling clock. This job is accomplished by phase lock oscillator. PLO
divides the one pulse per second signal from GPS into required number of
pulses per second for sampling. At present in most systems, this is 12 per
cycle of fundamental frequency [4]. The sampling instant could be identified,
as the pulse number within one second interval is identified by the GPS time
tag.

When the phasors are time tagged then they are referred as synchrophasors.
New IEEE Standard C37.118-2005 [10] (In 2011, it was divided into two parts
with one describing the standards of phasor measurements and the other
describing standards of communication channel) describes the exact format of
the time tagging and the measurement of synchrophasors.



Fig.3 : Synchrophasor definition and angle convention




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Using the synchronized clocks as a reference, a PMU creates the phasor
representation (complex number) of a constant sinusoidal signal as shown in
fig.3. The time tag, representing the reporting instant, forms the reference for
the phasor representation of the measured sinusoidal signal. The relationship
between the time tag and the phasor representation is such that the phase
angle of the phasor is equal to the angular separation between the time tag
and the peak of the sinusoid. For instance, in Fig.3.a the peak of the signal
coincides with the time tag producing an angle measurement of 0, whereas in
Fig.3.b the signal crosses zero at the time tag producing an angle
measurement of -90 as per the synchrophasor standards.

If the phasors are determined with respect to arbitrary time signals the phase
angle by itself has no particular significance. So when all PMUs in the power
system use the same time reference, their measurements are comparable
and the phase angle differences between the phasors are accurate.




4 -A/D Converter

The Analog to digital converter digitizes the analog signal, from the AAF,at
sampling instants defined by the sampling time signals from PLO. These
digitized samples are then fed to the phasor microprocessor.

5- Phasor microprocessor
It is programmed to calculate the positive sequence components from the
digitized sampled data by using an recursive algorithm which is usually
Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) as described in [11]. This calculated phasor
is time-tagged. All the measured data are transmitted to the remote location
through a proper communication channel using modems.

6- PMU utilization in power system
The phasor measurement units installed at various buses in the power system
network provides with a pool of time-tagged phasor measurement data at
various nodes in the network. These data are gathered by the device called
phasor data concentrator which synchronizes the measurement taken at
every time instant independent of when the data was received. Then these
time synchronized datas are fed to the advanced application software for the
analysis of power system. Based on this analysis, system control, protection
and various other functions are guided. Phasor data concentrator has been
detailed discussed in [12].



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OPTIMUM PLACEMENT OF PMU

Observability of the system is necessary for better monitoring, control,
operation and protection of the system. In simple context, the system is said
to be observable if all the state vectors of the system can be estimated or
measured directly or indirectly to the required accuracy. The concept of
system observability is defined in two ways [13] namely, Numerical
observability and Topological observability. It is obvious, that installing PMU at
every bus will prove to be uneconomical. So, Measurements that can used for
observability estimation are listed in [13] as of three types namely,


(i) Direct measurements: They are the voltage and incident current phasor
values at the buses where PMUs are located.
(ii) pseudo measurements: These are the current and voltage phasor values
calculated from direct measurement data through ohms law.
(iii) Extended measurement: They are the current and voltage phasors which
are calculated at the zero injection bus. This extended measurement is
defined only in two cases. First,in the case of a bus where all the incident
current are known except one. Hence, the unknown current value can be
inferred from the kirchoffs law. Second, in the case of a bus where all the
incident bus voltages are known, hence the voltage of that bus can be inferred
from the kirchoffs law.



Optimal placement of PMUs in the system topology fulfilling the objective of
complete observability of the system is necessary. This objective has been a
subject of research in many papers[13],[14],[15],[16]. The task of analyzing
power system observability is equivalent to the task of building measurement
spanning tree. According to the network topology, identified by the system
adjacency matrix, pseudo and extended measurements are obtained from the
direct measurements. In turn, by using this calculated measurements, new

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pseudo and extended measurements at adjacent buses or nodes are
calculated to we fail to find new measurements.




As a result of this, a measurement spanning tree will be built and if it included
all of the buses in the system then the system is said to be observable in the
topological sense. Though this technique is basic one, several methods have
been adopted in above cited research papers in determining the optimal
placement of PMUs in the system for its complete observability such as binary
search algorithm, incomplete observability, observability factor analysis,
hybrid genetic algorithm and simulated annealing, to name a few.



APPLICATIONS


Phasor measurement unit encompasses high potential to be effectively
utilized by the power system utilities to advance the overall existing
technology. Considering its accuracy and speed in the measurement of the
phasors and other parameters, it will materialize as a fundamental component
in smart grids. A survey on its applications is presented below

1- Early applications
During early times at the introduction of commercial PMUs, due to low
availability and high cost of communication channels, post-event monitoring
were the only application of PMUs. At this stage they were essentially used as
digital system disturbance recorders. The frequency and phasor
measurement data provided by PMUs showed interesting information and
expanded their application scope in the power system.
2- State estimation
Voltage and phase angles at different buses describe the state of the system.
Usually in the traditional state estimation, the line flow measurements of real
and reactive power were used to estimate the voltage and phase angle at all
the buses in the system. In other words, the state of the system was just
inferred from the unsynchronized power flow measurement. But with the
advent of PMU, state measurement instead of state estimation, is made
possible. In other words, state of the system is obtained through direct
measurements from PMUs rather than estimating from various available data
in the system
3- Power system protection
Synchronized phasor measurements helps in advancing the power system
protection techniques. PMUs enable the early fault detection in the system,
allowing for the quick isolation of the faulted segment preventing the power
outages. Synchronised phasor measurement provides us with time track of
the state variables and several of their derivatives over an observational
interval, so it makes simpler to predict the instabilities or outcome of a power

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swing or transients or any other disturbance using relatively good and
simplified models. With these predictions, appropriate protection decisions
can be taken by the operator. This leads to the concept of adaptive relaying,
where the protection functions changes according to the changing power
system conditions. Time tracking and prediction of state variables is
posturized in fig.5.mathematical model based calculations are used in the
control functions. To the extent that the assumed model is not valid under the
prevailing conditions, control function may not be effective.



Fig.5 : Time tracking and prediction of state variables



With synchronous phasor measurements, it is possible for direct feedback of
system parameters from remote locations to the controllers. Experience
shows that improved control performance is achieved with PMUs based
controllers, than the model based controllers. Also the frequency data are
representative of the transient stability, electromechanical oscillation and
certain overload phenomenon, which certainly helps in advanced control of
power system. PMUs enable wide area measurement, protection and control
in the whole area of regional transmission networks and local distribution
grids. Power quality can be increased by precise analysis and automated
correction of power sources based on the feedback from the PMUs. Various
applications of PMU are detailed in [17],[18],[19].


RELIABILITY ISSUES WITH PMU

The problems associated with PMUs include clocking system failures and
inaccuracies, communication channel problems, instrument transformer

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problems, filter instabilities and inaccuracies, calibration errors, component
failures, software errors, etc.. These problems affect the phasor measurement
applications of monitoring, controlling and protecting power system. The
reliability of the PMUs must be ensured for its effective application in the
power system.

CONCLUSION
The above presented a brief review on the phasor measurement unit and its
application in the power system. For detailed analysis, appropriate references
were cited. Currently, researches are carried out in integrating more functional
components into the existing PMU and extend its application capabilities in
the power system. Also, a number of pilot projects are being carried out in
many countries and utilities to install PMUs and analyze its possible
advantages in their existing systems. There is no exaggeration in saying that
PMU is one of those technologies which has revolutionized the way of power
system operation in the recent decades. PMU proves to be a promising
component for the Smart girds for its advanced measurement, monitoring,
control, protection, reliability and automated decision supporting objectives. In
the coming years, we can witness the extensive use of PMU world over.