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.
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 / People
• Publications
• Documentation

News Updates
NEW - 2013-02-25 - IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement paper on OpenPMU
2013-01-23: We got a Facebook URL - www.facebook.com/OpenPMU :)
2013-01-08: OpenPMU Case Study by National Instruments
2012-12-30: Luigi Presents OpenPMU in Rio de Janeiro
2012-12-03: OpenPMU - Ready for its first trip to Brazil!
2012-10-09: OpenPMU Presentation by Queen's Uni. Belfast at STRONgrid Meeting, KTH, Stockholm
2012-10-09: Video: Building an OpenPMU at KTH, Stockholm
2012-06-01: Cisco / SISCO begin open source project for Synchrophasor comms (IEC 61850-90-5)
2012-05-29: New updated documentation for PCB fabrication and connection.
2012-05-28: Assembly Instructions for the OpenPMU Enclosure now available on Documentation page.
2012-05-28: Facebook page gets a new look! - Check it out!
2012-02-12: Welcoming Iyad Al-Khatib (KTH) to OpenPMU, developer of IEEE C37.118 middleware for OpenPMU!

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.

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