Development of Micro Phasor Measurement Unit (µ-PMU) to Facilitate Synchrophor Learning at Undergraduate Level

Author Name(s): Saurabh Chaurasia, Vikram Chandora, Abhishek Tripathi, U.B.Mujumdar, Jayant Joshi
Author Email: mujumdarub@rknec.edu

Abstract

Synchrophasor and Phasor measurement unit (PMU) technology has been widely deployed in electrical power transmission network for protection and state estimation. This technology has also been extended at distribution level mainly in Smartgrids and Microgrids. The increased applications of Synchrophasors had made it necessary to develop trained engineering graduates in the field. In this work, a laboratory prototype of micro PMU (µPMU) has been developed using a microcontroller board and open source software as per the IEEE standards. The prototype has all the functionalities of commercially available PMU with some compromises on the speed and data transmission rate due to the hardware limitations. Simulated results show that the µPMU functionalities can be very well demonstrated using the prototype.

Introduction

Synchrophasor technique has been widely deployed in electrical power transmission network for protection and state estimation. Phasor measurement unit (PMU) is the basic building block of syncrophasors, that gathers the time synchronised information of magnitude and phase of electrical quantities [1-3]. In recent years, the increased awareness about green energy sources is changing the structure of the electrical network. Microgrids and Smartgrids are setup to accommodate the distributed renewable energy sources in the power system [4-6]. With this scenario, the concept of synchrophaser has been extended to the distribution network. Micro PMU(µPMU) is the device, that is used in distribution network to obtain the synchrophaor parameters at medium/low voltage level. Looking at the growth of distributed generation and Microgrid, there will be a need for skilled personnel able to undertake roles such as researchers, resource planners, engineers, and technicians in coming years. Therefore, it is important that students should learn the concepts of synchrophasors and PMU. The commercially available proprietary PMUs are based on high computational power processors with high speed communication network to exchange huge data base to phasor data concentrators (PDC). The setup is quite expensive and may not be affordable by the undergraduate level institutions focused primarily on the teaching learning. This work is an attempt to develop low cost till accurate µ-PMU unit for the demonstration of synchrophasor concept to undergraduate students.

Conclusion

From the prototype testing, it can be concluded that a full featured µPMU with lower data transfer speed can be developed using a general purpose microcontroller and GPS module. The prototype can be used as novel teaching tool in the Microgrid and Smart gird laboratories and will help to demonstrate the operation of µPMU and Synchrophasor concept. In further development, the prototype can be used for the demonstration of real time control of distributed generation sources in the laboratory.

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