Motivation
On August 14, 2003, North America suffered its largest blackout. Major 345 kV transmis- sion lines dropped out of service, unbeknownst to operators, causing a cascading outage that extended across the Midwest, Northeast, and into Canada [1]. An investigation launched by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found that the blackout could have been confined to a small region had operators known the status of overstressed and failing lines.
Since this catastrophe, steps have been taken to improve real-time, networked mon- itoring of America’s electrical transmission and distribution network, in order to enable system operators to predict and counteract or confine disturbances. Increased situational awareness can also allow the dynamic calculation of maximum load ratings based on en- vironmental conditions. Overall, improved monitoring allows utilities to provide power to customers in a more efficient, more reliable, and safer way.
The installation of phasor measurement units (PMUs) provides a real time image of operating conditions. Increasing the number of PMUs improves the resolution of data available to control room operators. It also creates the possibility for implementation of automatic control systems to correct disturbances or failures. However, these devices are costly, approximately $43,400 per installation, and are hard to install. They also require dedicated communication networks to feed data back to centralized processors, known as phasor data concentrators (PDCs).
PMUs can offer a new insight when installed at the distribution level of the power grid. The prevalence of distributed generation, smaller power plants that supply communities rather than regions, is increasing due to the fact that renewable power generation is better suited for communities. This increase causes an increase in dynamic events at the distribu- tion level, as wind turbines and solar farms increase and decrease their output in step with the weather. Having PMUs measuring at the distribution level will give a more accurate picture of how the increase in distributed generation affects the power grid on a day-to-day and long term basis.
Objective
The goal of this project is to design a low cost PMU that takes measurements at the residential level of the power grid. This device should be easy to manufacture and highly reliable. It should communicate results back to a central database using the protocol described in the IEEE Standard for Syncrophasor Data Transmission.
