Project Description
OpenPMU is a platform for the research, development and education of Synchrophasor technology.

OpenPMU

OpenPMU is a collection of resources allowing academic institutions to collaborate on Phasor Measurement Unit, Synchrophasor and Smart Grid research.

NEWS - 2012-02-12: Welcoming Iyad Al-Khatib (KTH) to OpenPMU, developer of IEEE C37.118 middleware for OpenPMU!

The objective of OpenPMU is to create a standardised platform on which academic researchers can develop and test Phasor Measurement algorithms, hardware and applications.

• Why Open Source?
• Collaborators
• Publications
• Documentation

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) are a central component of modern electrical energy system monitoring and control schemes, or Smart Grids. They are used to measure electrical signals according to a global time signal so that the health of the electrical power system can be monitored and controlled. A phasor is a complex number representing the magnitude, frequency and phase angle of an electrical waveform. Synchrophasors are phasors synchronised to a time signal, often GPS.



The marketplace is rich with devices that provide Synchrophasor data, but due to copyright limitations the algorithms by which these devices estimate Synchrophasors is not published. This makes them of limited use in academia for the development of new protection and control strategies in Smart Grids.



OpenPMU addresses the issues of openness and expense by providing a standardised open source platform on which researchers can prototype new algorithms and applications. OpenPMU is an open source research and development alternative to commercial devices, not competition.

OpenPMU uses standard laboratory hardware, such as National Instruments data acquisition boards and Garmin GPS engines, to ensure low cost of entry. The objective is to produce a fully open source (hardware/software) data acquisition device to provide high quality sample data for use in open source phase estimation algorithms.

To keep up to date with OpenPMU, join our Facebook page.

Please also visit the GridTrak Open Source PMU. Authored by AJ Stadlin, this interesting take on PMUs uses a crossing detection method to produce a seriously low cost PMU!