Optimal Placement of Phasor Measurement Units: Particle Swarm Optimization Approach

This paper is concerned about the optimal placement of phasor measurement units (PMUs) so as to make a system completely observable. Observability assessment is done by the aid of the topological observability rules. Moreover a new rule is added which can decrease the number of required PMUs for complete system observability. A modified binary particle swarm is used as an optimization tool for obtaining the minimal number of PMUs and corresponding configuration. In order to improve the speed of convergence, an initial PMU placement is provided by graph-theoretic procedure. The simulation results of proposed approach are presented for several IEEE test systems. Index Terms-Observability analysis, optimal placement, particle swarm optimization, phasor measurement unit.