Comparison of several PMU placement algorithms for state estimation

Synchronized phasor measurement units (PMUs) have evolved into a practical tool for measurement of power system voltage and current phasors. It can enhance many present applications such as state estimators, stability controls, and remedial action schemes, and they can also serve as disturbance monitors. Since the quantities measured by PMUs are voltage and current phasors, the linear relation between them holds when modeling the branches in the network. This feature permits linear state estimation process, thus avoiding repetitive manipulations with large matrices in iterative procedure as it is in the traditional case. This significantly reduces the computational time and errors level. This paper describes several methods for Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) placement with the aim of linear static state estimation of power system networks. These methods are depth first, graph theoretic procedures and simulated annealing method as well as tabu search method and Genetic algorithms. The effectiveness and flexibility of these proposed algorithms are illustrated with numerical simulation using some IEEE test system.