A Novel Bus-Ranking-Algorithm-Based Heuristic Optimization Scheme for PMU Placement

This article presents a scheme for cost-optimized phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement and associated communication infrastructure (CI) design. For this purpose, a bus ranking algorithm is proposed, which ranks the buses in terms of connectivity, associated branch lengths, and supplementary network coverage ability that incentivizes better redundancy and lesser CI requirement. Next, a genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to search for minimum-cost optimal PMU placement solutions within the search space defined by the ranked-bus order. The search space is expanded by adding buses in the ranked order till GA finds a suitable solution satisfying the requisite constraints. The proposed scheme's performance is validated through comparison with existing state-of-the-art algorithms for IEEE 14-, 30-, and 118-bus networks under normal,
$N-1$
PMU contingency, branch loss contingency, and
$N-1$
PMU/branch loss contingency conditions. In addition, considering real-world applications, the performance of the proposed scheme under channel-limit conditions is reported in this article.