IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 9, No.
1, Februaiy 1994
DESIGN OF TELEMETERING CONFIGURATION FOR
N.D.R.Sarma. . V.Veera.Raju
Student member, IEEE
'CMC Limited
115, Sarojini Devi Road
Secunderabad 5 0 0 003
INDIA.
ABSTRACT
In modern power system control centers,
operation and control of power systems are
carried out with the help of real-time
computers. Live data is captured by Remote
Terminal Units (RTUs) located at various
stations and transmitted over suitable
communication media to the control center for
display, monitoring and control.
Telemetering equipment forms a sizable
component of the project cost. A methodology
is presented in which RTUs are located at
different stations to meet certain criteria
such as observability of the system and
absence of critical measurements. Additional
reliability constraint of loss of information
from a single RTU for the above two
constraints is also imposed.
Keywords : Energy management systems (EMS),
telemetering system, remote terminal units,
observability, critical measurements.
INTRODUCTION
In modern power system control centers,
also called as Energy Control Centers (ECC),
operation and control of power systems are
carried out with the help of real-time
computers. Live data is captured by Remote
Terminal Units (RTUs) located at various
stations and transmitted over suitable
communication media to the control center
computer system for display, monitoring and
control. The data received at ECC are prone
to errors arising from transducers,
communication systems etc. A state estimator
is used to provide a reliable and complete
data base. In order to be able to estimate
the state of the system, the measurement
system should be sufficient .enough to
estimate the magnitudes and phase angle of
the voltages of all the buses in the system.
Bad data in the measurements should be
detected and eliminated from the measurement
set. Further, it is also well known that for
reliable estimation of the system state, the
measurement system should have sufficient
93 WM 187-5 PWRS A paper recommended and approved
by the IEEE Power System Engineering Committee of
the IEEE Power Engineering Society for presentation
at the IEEE/PES 1993 Winter Meeting, Columbus, OH,
January 31 - February 5, 1993. Manuscript submitted
January 7, 1992; made available for printing
November 30, 1992.
0885-8950/94/$04.00 0 1993 IEEE
38 1
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
K.S.Prakasa Rao
Senior member, IEEE
Department of Elect.
Indian Inst. of Tech., Delhi,
Hauz Khas, NEW DELHI - 110 016
INDIA.
redundancy and uniform spread [ 13. Hence the
location of RTUs plays an important role in
an EMS project.
To support the security monitoring
function in Energy Control Centers following
alternatives are available with regard to
placement of RTU:
a) Placement of RTUs at all the stations to
gather the information of the network
status (position of switches, breakers)
and all the relevant measurements like
MW,MVAR,KV etc.
b) Placement of RTUs at all the stations as
in alternative (a) to gather the
information on network status from all
stations and gathering the information
from measurements at only some selected
stations.
c) Placement of RTUs at only some selected
stations to obtain the network status and
measurements also from the same stations.
The remaining information with regard to
network status is obtained manually.
The alternative (a) though desirable is
most expensive and may not be practicable.
Option (c) is the cheapest since the RTU
placement and measurement systems are located
at a selected number of stations only. Though
the network status is not obtained in real-
time, it can be updated whenever there is a
change in the configuration. In the proposed
method option (c) is considered.
In this paper a new method for the
design of measurement system is presented
wherein RTUs are placed only at some selected
substations. The proposed method honors
location of RTUs decided apriori and works
from that point.
Handschin and Bongers [2] pointed out
that local redundancy and the probability of
detecting bad data are the most important
factors when planning a measurement system.
Their method consists of moving the
measurements from the best to the worst part
of the network, starting with an initial
solution with almost designed redundancy. Roy
and Villard [ 3 ] described a method in which
different possible telemeasurement
configurations are compared by off-li'ne
simulations of state estimations. Koglin
[4] used a general criterion to
systematically eliminate Some of the
measurements in the system to obtain an
optimal set from various measurements. Phua
and Dillon [5] developed a method based on
entropy criterion. The problem is posed as
non-linear programming problem which is
382
solved using a sequential linearly
constrained minimization method. Mafaakher et
a1 [6] have used the ability of bad-data
detection of state estimation to design a
metering system. Aam, Holten and Gjerda [7]
provided a brief survey of the various
methods of optimal meter placements
highlighting the advantages and
disadvantages of each method. They also
presented a method by extending Koglin's
method to obtain a more robust solution.
Nabil Abbasy and Shahidehpour [8] proposed a
mathematical programming problem model to
identify redundant measurements from a given
set of measurements. Young Moon Park et a1
[ 9 ] presented an algorithm of optimal meter
placement for the state estimation, which
minimizes the total investment subject to a
prespecified accuracy of the estimated state.
Hiroyki Mori and Yasuo Tamura [lo] compared
various approaches of meter placement in
power system static state estimation and
proposed a method based on stochastic load
flow model.
In all the above methods the emphasis
was on the design of a measurement system at
the meter level only. An RTU is required to
be located at a station whether one or more
quantities are to be measured at this
station. Current trend is towards building
transducers at lower costs. Hence it is
logical to gather maximum possible
information by the located RTU in a station.
Thus the design of measurement system at the
RTU level becomes most relevant.
In this paper a new methodology for
design of telemetering configuration is
presented in which RTUs are located at
different stations to meet certain criteria
such as observability of the system, absence
of critical measurements. Additional
reliability constraint of loss of information
from a single RTU for the above two
considerations is also imposed. The
locations where RTUs are placed for SCADA
purposes as desired by the utilities are
honored. The proposed method is tested on
standard IEEE systems and on a practical
system. The results are presented and
discussed.
THEORY OBSERVABILITY CRITICAL
MEASUREMENTS
System observability and absence of
critical measurements are important criteria
for the design of telemetering configuration.
The concepts of observability and critical
measurements are explained below.
Observability L
A power system is said to be
'observable, in the sense of state estimation
with respect to a given measurement set M , if
the bus voltage magnitudes and angles
throughout the system can be determined by
processing the measurements in M by a state
estimator. Otherwise the power system is
said to be 'unobservable' with respect to M.
It was proved in [I13 that if measurements in
the system form a spanning tree connecting
all the buses then the system is observable.
Clements [ 1 2 ] has explained various
aspects of observability and reviewed some
methods of meter placement.
Critical Measurements L
A measurement is said to have detectable
error residual if an error in the measurement
shows up in the measurement residual,
residual being the measured value minus
calculated value [13]. It was proved that
there may be some measurements in which an
error in the measurement will not be
reflected in the residual. The problem of
determining which measurements have
detectable error residuals is solved by
identifying a class of measurements, called
'critical measurements' and showing that only
non-critical measurements have detectable
error residuals. Since only non-critical
measurements have detectable error residuals,
a bad data in those measurements can be
detected. But in the case of critical
measurements, a bad data is not reflected in
the error residual and hence cannot be
detected. A critical measurement is defined
as that measurement, which when not available
makes the system unobservable.
Thus critical measurements imply the
following :
. loss of critical measurements would make
the system unobservable.
. an error in the critical measurement
cannot be detected.
Hence it is important to see that a
system would not have any critical
measurements and be designed accordingly.
DESIGN TELEHETERING CONFIGURATION
In this section a new design methodology
of the telemetering configuration at the RTU
level is proposed.
Various inputs and outputs of
'Telemeterinq Confiqurator' are shown in
Fig.1. It is assumed that all possible MW and
W A R flows in the lines and transformers are
acquired by the RTU at the sub-station so
that maximum information is gathered from the
substation ( s f s ) . It is assumed that voltages
are measured at all the buses in the s f s
where RTUs are placed.
The complete procedure of designing the
telemetering configuration is divided into
System Specified Desired List of zero
topology RTU bus bus injection
locations injection measurements
measurements
4
TELEMETERING CONFIGURATOR
Location of RTUs List of measurements
to be measured by RTUs.
Fig.1 Block diagram of telemetering
configurator.
 383

four phases. Each of these phases
explained below :
Phase 1 L Placement of RT.Us till the
redundancy atleast e m a l to 1.0 :
In general generating stations and some
substations are normally considered as very
important by the utilities from the point of
view of data acquisition. These stations are
treated as specified locations for initial
placement of RTUs. With this initial
measurement set the redundancy is computed.
Redundancy is defined as the ratio of number
of known measurements to the number of
unknowns (state variables). If the redundancy
is less than 1.0 it implies that state
variables cannot be calculated by the state
estimator. If the redundancy is less than
one, location of RTUs is continued at other
locations till the redundancy is atleast
equal to 1.0. When the redundancy is atleast
equal to 1.0, the next phaseistomake the system
observable. At any stage the criterion for
placing an RTU at a location other than
specified locations is to pick up that bus at
which the maximum number of
lines/transformers are incident at the
corresponding s / s . The details of this phase
are shown in the form of a flow chart in Fig.
2.
Phase 2 i Placement of R T U s until the
system observable i
With the measurement set obtained after
the placement of RTUs in phase 1 the system
is tested for observability. The test for
observability is explained in the previous
section. If the system is not observable,
enhancement of the measurement system is done
by placing additional RTUs at appropriate
locations. ( If the system is not observable,
then it is divided into different groups of
buses and/or isolated buses with respect to
[Place RTUs at specified Locationsj
s./
is the measurement system ) . The criteria for
placement of additional RTUs is shown in Fig.
3 as a flow chart.
Phase 3 i Placement of R T U s to cover
critical measurements i
In this phase additional measurements
are added to the measurement set by placing
additional RTUs to make the resultant
measurement system free of critical
measurements.
Critical measurements ( line flows and
bus injections ) are first identified using
the complete set of measurements available
through the RTUs at the end of phase 2.
(Since zero bus injection measurements are
not physically metered, they need not be
considered). These are called first order
critical measurements.
1. To start with, the first critical
measurement from the above measurement
is suppressed. The system becomes
unobservable-Then one or more additional
RTUs are to be placed as per the
procedure explained in phase 2 to make
the system observable under this
condition. This will lead to a new set
of critical measurements ( called second
order critical measurements ) . This
procedure of finding second order
critical measurements is repeated
sequentially for all the first order
critical measurements considering one at
a time.
Get the measurement list from phase 1.
I
observable?
Are there any Find the buses
isolated buses which have lines
linking first and

Calculate the redundancy

buses of the first linking first &
isolated bus second, find the

greater than or phase 2

'Arrange these buses so on
in the decreasing
order of number of
1inesfTr incident
at the correspond-
order of number of lines\tr incident ing s / ~ .

4- P e l e J t the '
Is there already an
RTU placed at this bus ? bus with
an RTU in that next bus with next highest
highest
lines/Tr
incident
Place a RTU at this location!
Fig. 2. Flow chart for phase 1.
Fig. 3 . Flow chart for phase 2.
384

2. The first order critical measurement system observable a n d - f r e e from critical

which results in the least number of
second order critical measurements is
chosen for consideration of placement of
additional RTUs. If, at this stage, the
number of second order critical
measurements happens to be same for two
or more first order critical
measurements, the choice of the bus (es)
for the placement of additional RTU(s)
is made by the criterion of the maximum
number lines/transformers incident at a
bus(es).The critical measurements in the
system at this stage are treated as
first order critical measurements.
The procedure of steps 1 and 2 above is
now repeated successively till the system is
completely free of any critical
measurements. The detail description of this
phase is shown in Fig. 4.
Phase 3 Placement of RTUs under
continsent loss of information L
It is sometimes possible that either the
RTU or the communication from an RTU may fail
and hence the information from an RTU may not
be available in the measurement set. One way
to overcome such situations is by using
pseudo-measurements. But if utilities would
like to enhance their measurement system
further for SCADA purposes and/or to make the
measurements (to the extent possible ) under
such situations, additional RTUs are required
to be placed. So in this phase additional
RTUs are placed to consider the l o s s of
information from an RTU. It may be noted that
sometimes the system may not become free of
critical measurements under this contingency.
This has to be repeated for each of the RTUs
located in the system at the end of phase 3 .
The details of this phase are given in Fig.
5.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed method is tested On
standard IEEE systems, viz., IEEE 14-bus, 30-
bus, 57-bus systems and on a practical
system.
Figs. 6-9 give the measurement systems
at the end of phase 1, 2 , 3 and 4 for IEEE
14-bus system respectively. It can be seen
that the IEEE 14 bus system has total number
of 11 substations. It is assumed that the
]Get the measurement set from phase 3 1

Get the measurement list from phase 2

4
Find the critical measurements
(line flow & bus injection measurements)
Is the no. of c:itical
measurements = O?
1

IConsider first critical measurement 1

.L
Supress this measurement from the
list. The system is unobservable
J,
Place an RTU to make the system
observable. Find the number of
critical measurements and store
them. Also store the number(s) of
bus(es) along with the number of of RTU whose loss of RTU whose loss
1inesfTr. at this bus(es) where an results in more results in more
RTU is placed to make the system no. of critical no. of groups.
observable. measurements. If there is a tie
& among these cases
Are all critical select that case
critica1
measurements covered ?
< which has more
no. of 1inesfTr.
measurements, covered by the
L ~
RTU .
Now consider that case which makes the
system to have less number of critical
measurements after placing the RTU to
cover this case. If there is a tie in
number of critical measurements, select
that case where the number of 1inesfTr.
incident are more at the bus where an RTU
is placed to cover this case. Place an
lthere in the list of RTUs. ,
&
I
RTU at the selected location to cover Go to phase 2 - placement of RTUs to
khis case. 1 make the system observable.
Fig. 4 . Flow chart for phase 3 . Fig. 5 . Flow chart for phase 4 .
 385

R *Bus-lnjection
p R T U
-
o,Zero Bus-
measurement
+ Line -Flow
in jection tuiearur e me nt
Measur a m ent

Fig.7 Measurement System a t t h e end of

Fig.6 Measurement System a t t h e end of Phase 2 f o r I E E E 1 4 bus system.
Phase 1 f o r IEEE 1 4 Bus system.

R
R

Fig.8 Measurement System a t t h e end of Fig.9 Measurement System a t t h e e n d of

Phasa 3 f o r IEEE 1 4 bus system. a l l p h a s e s f o r IEEE 1 4 bus system.

R 50
Fig. 10 Measurement System a t t h e end of
all p h a s e s f o r I E E E 30 bus system.
386

specified locations of RTUs are substations stations, 5 2 transmission lines and 6

consisting of buses 1 , 2 , 8 and (5,6). The transformers [a system smaller than a
redundancy with this measurement system is practical system considered here]. It can be
found to be greater than s.0.. So at the end very easily seen that the proposed method is
of phase 1 there are 4 RTUs in the system ( more systematic and hence takes much smaller
Fig. 6 ) . Now in order .to make the system time than that of Aam et a1 [7]. Such
observable, one additi'onal RTU is required at functions usually take longer times and are
the substation consisting of buses 4 , 7 and 9. required only in planning stages.
(Fig.. 7 ) . Further to make the system free of
critical measurements, two more RTUs are .............................................
required at the substations containing buses Phase No. of RTUs for various systems
11 and 13 respectively (Fig. 8). Now in order (Figure in brackets is redundancy)
to consider the criterion of l o s s of IEEE IEEE IEEE Practical
information from any single RTU, one more RTU 14 bus 30 bus 57 bus system
is placed at the substation containing bus (61 buses)
10. However it is not possible to make the .............................................
system free of critical measurements due to No. of s f s
loss of information from an RTU because of in the system 11 26 42 47
the topology of the IEEE 14 bus system. Thus
at the end of all phases there are total PHASE 1 4(1.49) 7(1.31) 7(1.12) 12(1.30)
number of 8 RTUs for the IEEE 14 bus system PHASE 2 5(2.44) 13(2.39) 20(2.56) 24(2.75)
as shown in Fig. 9. PHASE 3 7(2.89) 14(2.47) 23(2.67) 33(3.26)
PHASE 4 8(3.07) 17(2.73) 24(2.72) -
Fig. 10 gives the measurement system for .............................................
IEEE 30-bus system at the end of all phases. Fig.11 Summary output for test systems
In the case of a practical system
considered for the study which has 65 buses s1. System Cost in million Rupees.
and 99 lines, it is found that 24 no. of RTUs No. option(a) option(b) option(c)
are required to make system fully observable. Proposed
If it is required to make the system free of method
critical measurements it is found that it .............................................
needs seven additional RTUs which implies 1 IEEE 14 bus 2.968 2.854 2.251
additional costs. Thus telemetering system 2. IEEE 30 bus 6.851 6.547 4.939
can be designed keeping in view the 3. IEEE 57 bus 11.363 10.569 6.748
objectives outlined in this paper and alsa' 4. Practical 13.148 12.508 9.691
the financial considerations. The system
measurement system arrived at this method ____________________-------------------------
gives a good spread of measurements since it Fig.12 Cost particulars for various
is designed based on observability of the alternatives. (options are as
system and absence of critical measurements. described in 'Introduction')
The summary output for the various test
systems studied is given in Fig. 11. In all
the cases it is found that it is not possible
to make the system free of critical
measurements due to loss of information from
an RTU. However loss of information from an IEEE 14-bus system
RTU keeps the system observable. All the phases executed 00 00 32.20
First three phases 00 00 13.62
The cost particulars for different executed
systems for various alternatives are given in IEEE 30-bus system
Fig.12. It is assumed that the cost of an RTU All the phases executed 00 19 44.64
is Rs. 0.2 million and cost of MW and W A R First three phases 00 01 09.44
transducers is Rs. 9000 each. The cost of executed
monitoring the status is assumed'to be Rs. IEEE 57-bus system
500 and the cost of voltage transducer is All the phases executed 02 13 18.38
taken as Rs. 2000. It can be easily seen that First three phases 00 30 42.68
the proposed scheme has the lowest cost and executed
meets the required criteria. Practical system
First three phases , 06 59 00.21
Fig. 13 gives the execution times on executed
VAX-11/750 of Digital Equipment Corporation,
USA, ( without floating point accelerator )
for first three phases and for all the phases
separately for each of the system studied.
With regard to the practical system it has
taken about 7 hours to execute first three
phases. For the purpose of comparison of CONCLUSIONS
time taken for design of measurement system
by a different method is referred to here, as Anew design methodology has been
available in published literature. Aam proposed for the telemetering' configuration
Holten and Gjerda [7] state that it took 13 of an Energy Management Systems based on a
hours on a 32-bit Nord-500 mini-computer systematic approach. The methodology ensures
[which is faster than VAX 11/750 used in our at planning stage
study] for a system consisting of 45
* complete observability of the system

* absence of critical measurements
(hence ability to detect bad data in
all the measurements )
* the observability'of' the system in
the case of loss of information for
any single , RTU and absence of
critical measurements, if possible.
* a good spread of the measurements in
the system.
The proposed method has been tested on
standard IEEE system viz., IEEE 14-busI 30- [lo]. Hiroyuk Mori, Yasuo Tamura, IIComparison
bus, 57-bus systems. It is also tested on a of Approaches to meter placement in Power
practical utility system and the results are System
presented and discussed. International Journal of Energy Systems,
VO1.8, No.3, pp 139-163, 1988.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank CMC Limited for
providing facilities to carry out this work
and for the support and encouragement given
in bringing out this paper. The authors also
would like to acknowledge the reviewers for
their valuable comments and suggestions in
improving this paper.
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[3]. A.Le Roy and P. Villiard, 'Application
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[5]. K . Phua, T.S. Dillon, 'Optimal Choice of
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[6]. F.Mafaakher, A Brameller and J . F .
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N.D.R.Sarma (S"81-Mf87-S1189)
was born in Kuchipudi, Andhra
Pradesh, India on 7th Oct.
1961. He received the B.Tech
(Elect.) and M.Tech. (Elect.)
with Specialization in Power
System Engineering from
Regional Engineering College,
Warangal, India in 1983 and
1986 respectively. Presently he is working at
CMC Limited, Secunderabad. He has registered
for Ph.D degree in the Dept. of Elect. Engg.
at IIT Delhi, India. His areas of interest
include Real Time control of Transmission and
Distribution Systems.
V.Veera was born in
Andhra Pradesh, India in 1956.
He received B.E. (Elect.) from
Osmania University and M.Tech.
(Electrical) with
specialization in Power system
Engineerinq from I.I.T.,
Madras.He is working as systems
Specialist at CMC Limited,
Secunderabad since 1982. His areas of
interests are Energy Management Systems,
Security Analysis, Power System Restoration.
K.S.Prakasa Rae (S'70-M'74-SM'81) was born in
Prakkilanka,A.P,India on July 15th , 1942. He
received his B.E. (Elect. ) , M.E. (Power
Systems) from Osmania Univ., in 1964 and 1966
respectively. He obtained his Ph. D degree
from the Indian Inst. of Tech. Kanpur, India
in 1974. He is presently a professor in the
Elect. Engg. Dept. of 1.I.T Delhi, India. His
fields of interest are Power System Planning,
Operation and Reliability.