Optimal PMU placement in the Southern Cameroon Interconnected Grid considering the effect of a group of ZIBs for complete obervability and dynamic stability

Abstract In this paper, a solution for optimal PMU placement in the Southern Cameroon Interconnected grid (SIG) is proposed in response to a problem of dynamic stability in the network. In this power system, the monitoring of the parameters is ensured so far by the SCADA, a technology that gives unsynchronized measurements and whose state estimation of the grid is inconsistent. Furthermore, a scan rate of data makes the SCADA system inefficient for measuring the dynamic and transient behaviour occurring in the power grid. Present study uses the method of integer linear programming (ILP) considering the effect of a group of zero-injection buses (ZIBs). Then, a comparative analysis of our results is made with those of the algorithms of other existing optimization methods in order to evaluate the performance of the applied method from the viewpoint of the number of PMUs, the number of buses observable from one or more nodes, and the system observability redundancy index (SORI). The different results obtained through MATLAB 2020a clearly show that considering the effect of a group of ZIBs, the ILP method presents the most optimal solution with a number of 10 PMUs installed on the buses 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 25, 28, 33 and 39, with a complete observation of the SIG. This result is validated insofar as 50% of the buses obtained (5, 8, 11, 33 and 39) are found with all the other comparative methods. In addition, buses 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 39 represent the dominant interconnection substations of the SIG, bus 33 also being a dominant bus in the Area 3 of the SIG.