A method exploiting direct communication between phasor measurement units for power system wide-area protection and...

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Power Systems
• Control Systems

Background:

• Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are crucial for Wide-Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) systems.
• Current WAMPAC systems often rely on intermediate devices like phasor data concentrators, increasing latency and cost.
• Direct communication protocols for synchrophasor data are needed to optimize WAMPAC performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel method for direct communication between PMUs, bypassing intermediate data processing units.
• To enable the internal deployment of custom protection and control algorithms within PMUs.
• To reduce communication latency and equipment costs in WAMPAC systems.

Main Methods:

• Established direct communication links between two PMUs, utilizing synchrophasor measurements via the IEEE C37.118.2 protocol.
• Deployed Wide Area Protection and Control algorithms using internal protection logic equations within a client PMU.
• Validated the method using commercial PMUs in a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) setup with Opal-RT's eMEGAsim Real-Time Simulator.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated minimum communication latency by eliminating intermediate phasor data concentrators and protocol parsers.
• Achieved cost reduction by executing algorithms internally within PMUs, negating the need for external controllers.
• Successfully deployed and assessed an anti-islanding protection application as an illustrative example.

Conclusions:

• The proposed direct PMU-to-PMU communication method offers a low-latency, cost-effective solution for WAMPAC systems.
• This approach simplifies the deployment of advanced protection and control algorithms, making them accessible to protection engineers.
• The method facilitates rapid prototyping and implementation of wide-area measurement-based applications in power grids.