Power system observability with minimum phasor measurement units placement

This paper presents optimal phasor measurement units (PMUs) placement algorithms for power system observability. The optimal placement problem (OPP) is formulated such that minimizing the number of PMU installations for full network observability. Three approaches, in this paper, are introduced aiming at reducing the computational burden in Optimal Placement problems. Depth First Search, Simulated Annealing and Minimum Spanning Tree as well as their differences and relations are discussed in details. The OPP methodologies applied include the system observablility during normal operating conditions, as well as during single branch forced outages. In order to improve the speed of convergence, an initial PMU placement is provided by graph-theoretic procedure. The IEEE 14-bus, 118-bus standard test power systems and New England 39-bus test systems are used for simulation purposes.