A PMU Placement Optimal Method in Power Systems using Modified ACO Algorithm and GPS Timing

In this paper, optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) using Global Positioning System (GPS) is discussed. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is used for this problem. Pheromone evaporation coefficient and the probability of moving from state x to state y by ant are introduced into the ACO. The modified algorithm exceeds the ACO in obtaining global optimal solution and convergence speed, when applied to optimizing the PMU placement problem. The fitness function includes observablity, redundancy and number of PMU. Eigenvector Method (EM) is used to calculate the weights of fitness function. The suggested optimization method is applied in 14-bus IEEE system and the simulation results show that the proposed method can find the optimal solution in an efficient manner.