Design and Application of a Distribution Network Phasor Data Concentrator

The wide area measurement system (WAMS) based on synchronous phasor measurement technology has been widely used in power transmission grids to achieve dynamic monitoring and control of the power grid. At present, to better realize real-time situational awareness and control of the distribution network, synchronous phasor measurement technology has been gradually applied to the distribution network, such as the application of micro multifunctional phasor measurement units (μMPMUs). The distribution network phasor data concentrator (DPDC), as a connection node between the μMPMUs and the main station, is also gaining more attraction. This paper first analyzes the communication network structure of DPDCs and μMPMUs and compares and analyzes the differences in the installation locations, functions, communication access methods and communication protocols of the phasor technology devices of the distribution network and the transmission network. It is pointed out that DPDCs not only need the functions of data collection, storage, and forwarding like transmission network PDCs, but also should be able to access more μMPMUs, and can aggregate the phasor data of the same time scale from μMPMUs by different communication methods. The communication protocol selected by DPDC should be expanded to support remote control, telemetry, fault diagnosis and other functions of distribution automation. The application requirements of DPDCs are clarified, and the key indicators of DPDCs are given as a method to evaluate the basic performance of DPDCs. Then, to address the problems of more μMPMU access, abnormal communication, and data collection with different delays that DPDC encountered, a DPDC that considers multiple communication methods is designed. Based on the Linux system and the libuv library, the DPDC is designed with event-driven mechanism and structured programming, runs multiple threads to implement multitasking, and invokes callbacks to perform asynchronous non-blocking operations. The DPDC test system and test methods are designed. The performance of the designed DPDC is evaluated through the test and the test results are analyzed. Lastly, its real-world application is disclosed, which further confirmed the value of our DPDC.