Impact Analysis of Optimum Phasor Measurement Unit Placement on Western Kenya Power Network

Most of power systems facilities world over are dealing with an aging system crisis and majority still maintains an antiquated monitoring technologies like Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA). The biggest disadvantage of systems like SCADA is that they provides asynchronous measurements at a slow data transfer rate resulting in inadequate monitoring and controls. For superior monitoring and controls, the wide area monitoring system (WAMS) technology came in handy where Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is the core system component. There has been a very slow uptake of PMU technology in most parts of the world which can be attributed to cost. The goal of this study is to examine the potential applications required to achieve the reliability and financial benefits of PMU technology in Kenya and other parts of the world. This paper tend to investigate ways of obtaining optimum PMU placement considering Kenya Power transmission network system, concentrating in Western region containing 39 - Bus system by use of a Hybrid Algorithm method of the Particle Swarm Optimization and the Artificial Bee Colony. The Kenya Power Western region 39-bus system utilizes an authenticated method based on IEEE - 39 standard bus system. This hybrid algorithm is tested on an IEEE 39-bus test bench before being deployed in Kenya's power transmission system network, Western region. This system is modeled using the Power System Analysis Toolbox (PSAT), with simulation performed in MATLAB. The simulation results provide the best solution of 18 PMUs located on buses 3,6,7,10, 11, 13, 16, 18,20,23,26,28,30, 31,32,33,34, and 36 for maximum observability.