Experimental Validation of High-Performance HIL-Based Real-Time PMU Model for WAMS

Abstract

This article presents a novel real-time hardware-in-loop-based model for synchronized phasor measurement unit (PMU) which incorporates an adaptive observer to estimate the phasor quantities of the actual hardware-based PMU model. The proposed model is feasible for a wide-area monitoring system (WAMS) in modern power grids. The performance of the proposed model is compared to the conventional algorithms of the performance (P)-class and measurement (M)-class PMU models in terms of total vector error and rate of change of frequency under different scenarios (frequency ramp, unbalance with interharmonics, and out-of-bound offnominal frequency). The main advantages of the proposed model compared to existing models are as follows: (1) combining the advantages of both P and M classes in terms of achieving required standard steady-state performance (IEEE C37.118-2005) while capturing the dynamic system performance, (2) improving the redundancy due to PMU loss, (3) allowing faster implementations and advanced visualization tools, and (4) enhancing WAMS accuracy performance. Despite the advantageous introduced utilizing the proposed model, there is still a tradeoff gap between the investment cost of the installed hardware-based PMUs and system redundancy. Moreover, a laboratory-scale six-bus setup is built and tested to demonstrate the practical validity of the proposed model.