Applications of PMU in renewable energy generation

The potential future applications of phasor measurement units (PMU) for power system operations under high penetrations of wind and other renewable energy sources is discussed in this paper. Renewable energy sources are highly variable in nature. Similar to the conventional generating plants, outputs from these renewable energy sources (RES) have impact on grid operations. The rapid penetration of RES in the grid has made the utilities to have a real time monitoring of these sources. This can be accomplished with the help of synchrophasors. Apart from real time monitoring, there are various other applications such as loss of mains protection, equivalent inertia calculation and small signal stability assessment of RES. These applications which are possible with the help of synchrophasors will be discussed in detailed.