Using Synchrophasor Status Word as Data Quality Indicator: What to Expect in the Field?

Data quality plays a crucial role in successful applications of synchrophasor data in power system operation and control. This paper presents the results of a data quality analysis of a multi-year field-recorded synchrophasor dataset. The analysis has identified several typical data quality issues encountered in the field data. An examination of the PMU status words included with the dataset has revealed several inconsistent implementations and the lack of correlation between the PMU data quality and the status word, which impacts the usefulness of such information. Our investigation has concluded that the status word alone as found in the recorded field dataset could not be used as a reliable indicator of data quality for field-recorded data. Several recommendations are proposed to improve the usefulness of the PMU status word.