Techniques for Wide-Area State Estimation in Power Systems

Abstract

Because of a move from Independent System Operators (ISOs) to Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs), a need for real-time wide-area system monitoring has arisen. The state estimator (SE) is the tool currently used in power systems for real-time monitoring. Because current SE techniques become operationally expensive on such large systems, it is beneficial to consider alternate methods for wide-area state estimation (WASE). In particular, hierarchal methods for WASE become beneficial for large systems because of their speed of operation and relatively low data volume. This study tests four hierarchal WASE methods - two taken from literature, and two developed by the author — and compares them with the use of an integrated wide-area estimator. Additionally, because of their accurate and readily available measurement capability, the inclusion of phasor measurement unit (PMU) data in the WASE methods is examined. For the purpose of realistically integrating an RTO WASE with current ISOs, the methods are constrained so that they do not require sensitive data, nor do they alter the operation of the ISOs SE in any way. The methods are tested for speed of operation, global and local accuracy, and robustness under bad data and data loss.