Minimum Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) Placement in Power Systems Using Cuckoo Search Algorithm

Abstract

Phasor measurement unit (PMU) is an important component in real-time monitoring of electrical power parameters. PMU placement is an issue in any power system network since the network observability is required. This paper proposes an optimal method for minimal PMU placement. In the method, a power network observability check algorithm is implemented, and the cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) is applied to compute for the optimal placement solution. The IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, 57-bus, and 118-bustest system are used as the test network. The result from the proposed method are compared to other minimal PMU placement methods using genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) as search algorithms. The proposed method provides the optimal results in all test systems, but other methods give sub-optimal results in some test systems. Moreover, the proposed method has lower computation time and the initial values are easier to set compared to PSO and GA.