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This work is a survey of current trends in applications of PMUs. PMUs have the potential to solve major problems in the areas of power system estimation, protection, and stability. A variety of methods are being used for these purposes, including statistical techniques, mathematical transformations, probability, and AI. The results produced by the techniques reviewed in this work are promising, but there is work to be performed in the context of implementation and standardization. As the smart grid initiative continues to advance, the number of intelligent devices monitoring the power grid continues to increase. PMUs are at the center of this initiative, and as a result, each year more PMUs are deployed across the grid. Since their introduction, myriad solutions based on PMU-technology have been suggested. The high sampling rates and synchronized measurements provided by PMUs are expected to drive significant advancements across multiple fields, such as the protection, estimation, and control of the power grid. This work offers a review of contemporary research trends and applications of PMU technology. Most solutions presented in this work were published in the last five years, and techniques showing potential for significant impact are highlighted in greater detail. Being a relatively new technology, there are several issues that must be addressed before PMU-based solutions can be successfully implemented. This survey found that key areas where improvements are needed include the establishment of PMU-observability, data processing algorithms, the handling of heterogeneous sampling rates, and the minimization of the investment in infrastructure for PMU communication. Solutions based on Bayesian estimation, as well as those having a distributed architectures, show great promise. The material presented in this document is tailored to both new researchers entering this field and experienced researchers wishing to become acquainted with emerging trends. 

Communication networks in power systems are a major part of the smart grid paradigm. It enables and facilitates the automation of power grid operation as well as self-healing in contingencies. Such dependencies on communication networks, though, create a roam for cyber-threats. An adversary can launch an attack on the communication network, which in turn reflects on power grid operation. Attacks could be in the form of false data injection into system measurements, flooding the communication channels with unnecessary data, or intercepting messages. Using machine learning-based processing on data gathered from communication networks and the power grid is a promising solution for detecting cyber threats. In this paper, a co-simulation of cyber-security for cross-layer strategy is presented. The advantage of such a framework is the augmentation of valuable data that enhances the detection as well as identification of anomalies in the operation of the power grid. The framework is implemented on the IEEE 118-bus system. The system is constructed in Mininet to simulate a communication network and obtain data for analysis. A distributed three controller software-defined networking (SDN) framework is proposed that utilizes the Open Network Operating System (ONOS) cluster. According to the findings of our suggested architecture, it outperforms a single SDN controller framework by a factor of more than ten times the throughput. This provides for a higher flow of data throughout the network while decreasing congestion caused by a single controller’s processing restrictions. Furthermore, our CECD-AS approach outperforms state-of-the-art physics and machine learning-based techniques in terms of attack classification. The performance of the framework is investigated under various types of communication attacks. 

Simultaneous real-time monitoring of measurement and parameter gross errors poses a great challenge to distribution system state estimation due to usually low measurement redundancy. This paper presents a gross error analysis framework, employing μPMUs to decouple the error analysis of measurements and parameters. When a recent measurement scan from SCADA RTUs and smart meters is available, gross error analysis of measurements is performed as a post-processing step of non-linear DSSE (NLSE). In between scans of SCADA and AMI measurements, a linear state estimator (LSE) using μPMU measurements and linearized SCADA and AMI measurements is used to detect parameter data changes caused by the operation of Volt/Var controls. For every execution of the LSE, the variance of the unsynchronized measurements is updated according to the uncertainty introduced by load dynamics, which are modeled as an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck random process. The update of variance of unsynchronized measurements can avoid the wrong detection of errors and can model the trustworthiness of outdated or obsolete data. When new SCADA and AMI measurements arrive, the LSE provides added redundancy to the NLSE through synthetic measurements. The presented framework was tested on a 13-bus test system. Test results highlight that the LSE and NLSE processes successfully work together to analyze bad data for both measurements and parameters.