A Holistic D-PMU Optimal Placement Framework Considering Pragmatic Constraints in Smart Grids

This paper describes a holistic method for optimal placement of distribution-level phasor measurement units (D-PMUs) to obtain the full observability of smart grids. The integer linear programming (ILP) approach is used with several extra constraints to solve the problem. The proposed method investigates the effect of system asymmetries, penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs), topology changes, distributed loads, on-load tap changer (OLTC), and the impact of zero injection buses (ZIB) and zero injection phases (ZIP) on the D-PMUs optimal placement. The proposed method is tested on a modified version of the IEEE 13 and 37 bus systems. Superiorities of this work are simultaneous consideration of switches effect without allocating an extra unit for their terminal buses as well as distributed loads and OLTC. In addition, stochastic uncertainty modeling is considered for DER-connected buses observability. System asymmetry and the impact of ZIB and ZIP are studied to minimize the number of D-PMUs.