Abstract

Background: Synchronized current and voltage phasor measurements contain both systematic and random errors. There has been no technique aimed at the identification of statistical properties of a cumulative random error coming with synchronized phasor measurements that can be seen as a result of phasor measurement unit errors and other uncertainties such as current and voltage transformer errors.

Materials and methods: The developed algorithm is based on some common mathematical analysis methods as well as probability theory definitions and theorems. Numerical results have been obtained by means of mathematical modeling with MATLAB as the software tool for simulations. A large set of current and voltage phasors sourced from phasor measurement units has been used as input data for the analysis.

Results: The probability distribution of a random error accompanying phasor measurements has been identified. An algorithm has been developed and verified that makes it possible to estimate the random error standard deviation when dealing with a large amount of data. The study also revealed a difference in the precision of phasor measurements made by digital fault recorders and relays.

Conclusions: The developed technique allows getting numerical data that showwhat the phasor measurement random error is like. This is important for the verification of various algorithms utilizing synchronized current and voltage phasor measurements, e.g. those aimed at line parameter estimation in real time. The associated scripts implemented in MATLAB make data processing faster and more convenient.

Key words: synchronized phasor measurements, systematic error, random error, normal distribution, uniform distribution.