Laboratory-based deployment and investigation of PMU and openPDC capabilities

Power systems operate in a more complicated condition than they used to. Changes in the wholesale electricity market alongside the difficulties in upgrading the transmission system have caused transmission systems to face more challenging network wide issues. Therefore, having a Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) is vital with regard to ensuring secure and reliable operation. Traditionally, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems were designed for monitoring of the power systems by polling the Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) at all the substations. However, the gathering of data is done at a slow rate of every few seconds so the monitoring is relatively static and infrequent. By using Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) data can be provided in higher rates, commonly once every cycle, and with higher accuracy. The measured data from PMU is transmitted to a central location called Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC), where data can be collected, managed and processed. PMU-based WAMS has a significant role to play in enabling “Smart Grids” at the transmission level. Brunel University has deployed a PMU and local PDC using openPDC to visualize, process and archive grid measured data locally in the laboratory. In this paper we present an investigation on openPDC features and a preliminary study that has been performed based on the PMU deployment.