Cost-Effective Operation Risk-Driven µPMU Placement in Active Distribution Network Considering Channel Cost and Node Reliability

This paper studies optimal micro-PMU (µPMU) placement problem in active distribution networks (ADNs) for complete observability. Minimum procurement cost of μPMUs in extensive distribution networks and minimum loss of observability (LOB) during islanding operations are two important aspects of observability analysis. Because of complexities, modern ADNs require maximum observability during islanding operations. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel objective function considering μPMU-channel cost and risk of operation (RoOP) of system nodes in the integer linear programming framework. The index RoOP is incorporated as a metric for node reliability. A novel zero-injection bus (ZIB) modeling is proposed using topology transformation. Consideration of RoOP is essential for active distribution networks, where islanding operations may appear due to unreliable branch and node outages. Incorporation of RoOP ensures minimum total system operation risk (TSOR), minimum LOB, and higher total system observability in ADNs. Accurate RoOP is evaluated using Markov chain model and Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed objective function considering only channel cost is tested first on IEEE 34-, 69-, and 123-bus systems and found substantial savings compared to existing literature. Situations like single μPMU outage, existence of ZIB effect, and conventional meters are considered to validate the effectiveness of the proposed formulation. Further, simulation conducted on the IEEE 34-bus system considering channel cost and RoOP depicts that the proposed method successfully achieves 13.21% lesser TSOR and 2.44% higher measurement redundancy compared to the case without considering RoOP. Eventually, 0% LOB is ensured for the maximum number of possible islanding situations.