Real-Time Strategies for Unwrapping of Synchrophasor Phase Angles

Phase angle measurements from synchrophasors show discontinuities when they roll over from +180 to -180 degrees or vice versa. This paper proposes efficient strategies for unwrapping of the angles in real-time data streams. Examples presented in this paper first show that the phase angle differences across bus voltage phasors can go over 360 degrees in a synchronized power system under stressed conditions. Unwrapped phase angles are shown to be useful in fast reliable islanding detection methodology, and for phase angle arithmetic such as for averaging of phase angles and for phase angle difference calculations. Strategies for handling missing phase angle data in real-time data streams are also discussed.