Optimization Approaches to Distribution System State Estimation for Optimal Meter Placement

Abstract

State estimation is widely used in power transmission systems for obtaining a real time network model where measurements of bus voltages and line power flows are available. On the other hand, in distribution systems, with limited availability of measurements, and additional measurements being expensive, careful selection of location for the placement of meters becomes important. The measurement meters typically considered are phasor measurement units (PMUs) and power (PQ) meters. In this work, optimization based approaches are proposed to address the optimal meter placement problem considering different objectives such as minimization of cost, weighted least square (WLS) residual estimate, and a multi-objective function comprising cost and WLS, and the average root mean square error (ARMSE) of the estimated state vector. The various optimization models are tested on a 33-bus distribution feeder, and compared based on meter placement cost and ARMSE of voltage estimates.