A Cloud-Hosted Synchrophasor Data Sharing Platform

The deployment of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) could support a new generation of wide area monitoring and situational awareness systems, but this has not yet occurred. Instead, PMU data exchange occurs through bi-lateral agreements, each reflecting substantial human involvement. Our work proposes a new model for PMU data sharing, based upon today’s cloud computing technology base. Cloud-based data capture, archiving, analysis and sharing represents a new paradigm, and provides access to flexible resources well-suited to intermittent bursts of heavy computational work. In addition, collaboration among entities could be greatly facilitated by hosting common applications in the cloud, with the further assurance when different operators examine the same data, they will see consistent information. Accordingly, we created GridCloud, a new cloud-hosted synchrophasor data sharing platform. GridCloud, which overcomes some apparent limitations of commercial cloud offerings, was developed and tested here to demonstrate the security, scalability, low latency and cost effectiveness. The system scales well enough to support nationwide deployment.