2004 11th International Conference on Harmonics and Quality of Power

Measurement Placement for Power System

State Estimation by Decomposition Technique
C. Rakpenthai, S. Premrudeepreechacham, Member, IEEE, S. Uatrongjit, Member, I,

and N. R . Watson, Senior Member, I

The purpose of measurement placement algorithm is to find

Abstract-This paper presents the concept of distributed the optimal placement (numbers, types, and positions) for
process to improve the previously proposed measurement measurement set [3],[4]. The solution of measurement
placement method for power system state estimation in which the placement problem of a large power system SE usually takes
minimum condition number of the measurement matrix is used
long computational time. An optimal solution is very difficult
as a criterion in conjunction with sequential elimination to reach
the near optimal measurement placement. Firstly, the entire to find and verified. Moreover, since its large size, the
network of the power system is decomposed into smaller obtained measurement matrix can become ill-conditioned and
subsystems. Then, in each subsystem, the optimal positions for the computation speed and convergence performance is poor.
measurement placement are determined by using the minimum In practical, the large power system is split to small sub-
condition number criteria. The numerical experiment results on networks and each sub-network is managed by local control
the IEEE 1Cbus system indicate that the proposed technique
gives the measurement matrix with smaller condition number center (or individual company.) The information of each sub-
and the computation time is much shorter. network may be sent to the central control center that controls
these sub-networks [ 5 ] . The algorithm based on combining the
Index Term-Measurement Placement, Observability, recursive quadratic programming with the dual method [6]
Decomposition Technique, Power System State Estimation. and the parallel processing algorithm [7] are developed to
solve the weighted least squares (WLS) estimation method.
1. INTRODUCTION The distributed state estimator based on reduced model is
TATE estimation (SE) is an essential function in energy presented in [SI. The distributed state estimator based on
S management system for system security monitoring and Lagrange theory to solve large power system SE problem is
control of power system. SE is based on mathematical relation presented in [9]. These papers intend to improve a robustness
between system state variables and actual measurements. For and computational efficiency of the distributed state estimator.
the conventional state estimation, the measurement equations However, these papers do not address the problem of where to
for bus voltage magnitude, real pouzer and reactive power are install the measuring devices.
non-linear. The solution must be obtained through an iterative In this paper, the idea of decomposing the large power
algorithm as in the Newton-Raphson power flow procedure. system into small sub-networks is employed to help finding a
Recently, phasor measurements are applied to the power measurement placement set of a large power system SE
system SE [l],[2]. Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are problem. By properly assigning the appropriate measuring
measuring devices that synchronized using synchronization devices, the measurement matrix of each sub-network is
signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite decoupled. Hence, the placement algorithm can be applied to
transmission. It is used to measure positive sequence voltage each sub-network independently.
phasors and current phasors. The PMUs are more accurate and This paper is organized as follows. Firstly, a WLS state
also can gather all measuring data at the same time. Since the estimation problem is briefly explained. Next, the proposed
voltage and current phasors are used, the state estimation measurement placement algorithm is described. Then, the
equations become linear and the solution can he obtained numerical experiments of the proposed algorithm are
directly. presented. The conclusions and discussions are included in the
last section.

C.Rakpenthai is with North-Chiang Mai University. Chimg Mai, 50230, 11. STATE ESTIMATION
PROBLEM
Thailand. (e-mail: chawasak@nonhcm.ac.th).
S. Premmdeepreechacham is with Department of Electrical Engineering, The measurement model used in power system state
Faculty of Engineering, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand. estimation is represented by:
(e-mail: sunic@eng.cmu.ac.th).
S. Uanongjit is with Depamnent of Electrical Engineering. Faculty of
Engineering. Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand. (e-mail: Z=HX+E (1)
sermsak@eng.cmu.ac.th).
N. R.Watson is with Depamnent of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where z is a vector of measurement values obtained from
University of Canterbury, Christehurch, New Zealand. (e-mail:
n.uatson~~lec.canterbury.ac.nzl. PMUs,

0-7803-8746-5/04/%20.00 02004 IEEE. 414

 x is a state variables (bus voltage magnitudes and
phase angles),
H is a measurement matrix,
E is a measurement error vector.
The state estimation problem of a power system can be
considered as the following WLS optimization problem,
Min ~ ( x= )[ z - H.]' [z-HX]
R-I (2)
where R is a diagonal measurement covariance matrix. These
weights are chosen as proportional to the accuracy of
measurement. However, normally, the covariances of the
measurements are unknown and often equal unit matrix since
the same instrumentation is used to obtain them. The solution
of Eq. (I), in WLS sense, is obtained by
[ H r K I H ] x= [ H T R - ' ] z (3)
In this paper, the bushar voltage phasors are chosen as state
variables and measuring values are the busbar voltage
phasors, the injection current phasors and the line current
phasors. The relation of the estimated state variable vector v
and the measurement vector z in the presence of
measurement elTor E are expressed as,
(4)
where
I is an identity matrix.
z, , z, , and z, are the measured values of the busbar
voltage, the injection current, and the line current sub-
vectors, respectively.
YM,qc are the bus admittance sub-matrix of the
measured and the calculated busbar voltage related to
z, ,respectively.
Y,, , Y,, are the bus admittance sub-matrix of the
measured and the calculated busbar voltage related to
zr ,respectively.
vM , V, are the measured and the calculated busbar
voltage sub-vectors, respectively.
E,, E , , and E, are the corresponding measurement
noise sub-vectors.
415
111. THEPROPOSED
PLACEMENT
ALGORITHM
Let assume that the entire network under consideration is
partitioned in r non-overlapping sub-networks. Each sub-
network consists of the internal buses, which are adjacent to
branches belonging only to this sub-network, and the
boundary buses. These buses are connected to other sub-
networks by tie-lines.
Then suppose that
1. There is no injected current measurement at boundary
bus.
2. There is no line current measurement on the tie-line.
3. Each sub-network has at least one bushar voltage
measuring device.
Based on the above conditions, by proper reordering, the
measurement model of the power system state estimation can
be written as,
where z,, vi, and Hi denote the measurement vector, the
state variable vector, and the measurement matrix of the i-th
sub-network respectively. E, represents the measurement
error vector related to zi. These zi, v , , Hiand E, are
formulated according to Eq.(4) for the i-th sub-network.
In Eq. (5), it can he noticed that there is no coupling
between sub-networks. Thus, there is no need to interchange
the measurement or state vector between them. Moreover, the
state variable of each sub-network can he estimated
independently. Since the size of the sub-network is smaller,
determining an optimal measurement placement can he
performed with less computation efforts using either the
minimum condition number criteria [IO] or other approaches
[12]-[14]. In this work, the method proposed in [IO] is applied
to this task because of its simplicity. The optimal
measurement placement of each sub-network is selected
independently to obtain completely determined condition, i.e.,
the number of measurements is equal to the number of state
variables. It should be noted that with this method even if the
tie-line are outage or opened, the value of the state variables
can still be estimated. In addition, if some sub-network is
unobservable, the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)
approach may be used to solve this partially observable [15].
However, SVD approach is significantly slower than solving
by the normal equations and requires more storage.
 IV. CASE STUDIES ANDRESULTS
In this section, the proposed algorithm is applied to the case
of IEEE 14-bus system. The results are compared to the
method in [IO] called Madtharad's algorithm which considers
the whole network.
The test system shown in Fig.1 is decomposed into three
non-overlapping sub-networks. The intemal buses and
boundary buses of each sub-network are shown in table I. The
slack bus of sub-network 1, 2 and 3 are chosen to be bus no.
1, 4 and 12, respectively. It is allowed to place a busbar
voltage measuring device at any slack bus. Notice that the
number of state variable in sub-network I , 2 and 3 are 4 , 4 and
6, respectively. The program has been developed using
program MATLAB and the test has been performed on Intel
Celeron 2.2 GHz. computer.
Mudrhurad's algorithm. In addition, by this decomposition
technique, the state estimation can be performed in parallel.
Each sub-network is connected together through the tie-
lines. It is important to considerate the stat estimation after
these tie-lines are outage (or opened). The Table 111 is shown
the observability of network when one of these tie-lines which
are tie-line (3-4), tie-line (5-6) or tie-line (9-14) are outage.
With the placement obtained from Madtharad's algorithm, the
entire network becomes unobservable because some
measuring devices are installed on these tie-lines as shown in
Fig.2. Thus, when they are outage, these the measuring
devices are loss too. On the contrary, with the placement
position obtained from the proposed algorithm as shown in
Fig. 1, the power system can still be observable although all
tie-lines are outage.

TABLE I V. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

OF EACHSUB-NETWORK
INTERNAL.B O W M Y , AND SLACK BUSES
In this paper, the application of the distributed processing
SE to the problem of PMUs measurement placement for
Slack bus
buses power system state estimation is presented. The proposed
2, 3 , 5 algorithm finds an optimal placement position based on
minimum condition number criteria of each sub-network.
12 Since the problem size is smaller, this decomposition
improves the computational time required to obtain the
The numerical experimental results are summarized in placement positions compared to the previously proposed
table II. It can be noticed that the measurement placement method uzith considering the whole network. From the
positions obtained from both algorithms allow the power numerical experimental, the decomposition technique
system to be fully observable. The average total CPU time provides a better strategy to solve the measurement placement
ratio between Madthar-ad's algorithm and the propose problem of a large power system state estimation and it should
algorithm is 13.6/1. The condition number of the measurement be studied further.
matrix of all sub-networks is less than that obtained from
TABLE 11
THENUUENCALEXPEWXAL RESULTS.
All Results
Suh-
Algorithm Measurement Measurement Busbar Voltagellnjected CPU Time Condition
network
Location Location CurrentlLine Current (sec.) Number
1 10 4 U013 0.03 19.23
Proposed
2 11 4 1/1/2 0.02 18.79
Algorithm
3 16 6 1/0/5 0.05 20.68
Madtharad's
57 14 3/0/11 1.36 22.95
Algorithm

TABLE 111
THE OBSERVAEUIIY OF SYSTEM WHENTIE-LIPIT IS OUTAGE

Branch Completely Observable

Case
outage/oPened Proposed Algorithm Madtharad's Algorithm
I Line 2-4 Yes Yes
2 Line 3-4 Yes No
3 Line 4-5 Yes Yes
4 Line 5-6 Yes No
5 Line 9-10 Yes Yes
6 Line 9-14 Yes No

416
 Fig. 1. IEEE 14-bus system and associated measurement set from the proposed algorithm.

4
@ : Generators

12 @ : Synchronous Condensers

I
IrJ
r y

4
: Busbar voltage meawement

+ Injection
: E"" measurement

2 3
m : Line current measurement

Fig. 2. IEEE 14-bus system and associated measurement set from Madthnrad's algorithm

[3] M. E. Baran, 2. Jiruiang, Z. Hongbo, and K. E. Garren, "A meter

VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors would like to thank the Thailand Research Fund
(TRF) for its financial supports. This paper was written when
the first author studied in Chiang Mai University.
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VII1. BIOGRAPHIES
Chawasak Rakpenthai was bom in Phattalung,
Thailand in 1977. He received B.Eng. and M.Eng. in
electrical engineering from Chiang Mai University in
1999 and 2003. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He i s a
,, ,. , leefurer at Faculty of Engineering, Nonh-Chiang Mai
.'4 UniveniN. Thailand. His main research interests are
$,i
4 applications of artificial intelligence in power system,
Al
~

power electronics. power system state estimation and

FACTS devices.

Suttiehsi Premrudeepreechseharn (S'91-M'97) was

bom in Chon Buri, Thailand in 1965. He received
B.Eng. in electrical engineering from Chiang Mai
University, Thailand and M.S. and Ph.D. in elecuie
power cnginecring from Rens~elaer Polytechnic
Instihlte, Troy, NY. He is an associate professor at
Department of Electrical Engineeiing, Chiang Mai
Unirerrity. Thailand. His reseaich interests include
power quality, high quality utility interface. power
eleevonics and anifieial intelligence applied power
system.

Sermssk Ustrongjit received B.Eng. (Hons) in

electrical engineerjng from Chiang Mai University in
1991, M.Eng and Ph.D in Physical Electronics in 1995,
and 1998 from Tokyo InstiNte of Technology, Japan.
Now he is an assistant professor at Department of
Electrical Engineering, Chiang Mai University,
Thailand. His research interests include numerical
methods for analog circuit simulation and optimization.

Neville R. Watson was born in 1961. He received

BE(Hons). Ph.D, and P.Eng,in electrical & computer
engineeiing from University of Canterbury, New
Zealand. He is a senior lechtrer at the University of
Canterbury where he received a PhD. His main
interests are in power system analysis, transient
analysis, harmonic and power quality.

418