Optimal placement of phasor measurement units to attain power system observability utilizing an upgraded binary harmony search algorithm

Phasor measurement units (PMUs), which provide time-synchronized measurements of current and voltage phasors, are considered as an advanced tool for monitoring, protection and management of modern power systems. In this paper, a novel method for optimal placement of PMUs for complete observability of power network is presented. However the installation cost of the PMUs in different places differ with each other, which is related to some factors like as the number of branches connectedto the placed bus, a big quantity of reported methods for optimal PMU placement problem considered an equal cost for PMU installation in different places. An upgraded binary harmony search algorithm is utilized in this paper as an optimization method to attain the minimum number of PMUs and their relevant locations considering the installation costs of the PMUs. The proposed method is applied to IEEE 14-bus, IEEE 30-bus, IEEE 39-bus and IEEE 118-bus standard test systems to obtain the optimal PMU placement. The simulation results confirm that the proposed method is efficient in optimal PMUs placement with minimum cost of configuration.