CEA Approves New PMU Placement Guidelines To Strengthen Power Grid Monitoring

A meeting was held on March 13, 2025, at the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) office to discuss the way forward on the draft guidelines for the placement of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) in the Indian power grid. The meeting was chaired by the Chairperson of the CEA, who welcomed all participants and emphasized the importance of deciding suitable locations for PMU installation. A committee was previously formed under the leadership of the Member (Power System), CEA, to study this in detail and prepare the guidelines.

The Chief Engineer in charge of Power System Engineering and Technology Development (PSE&TD) made a presentation. It highlighted different existing guidelines and standards for PMU placement, such as Regulation 48 (6) of the CEA regulations from 2022, a sub-committee report from 2023, and guidelines from the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) issued in 2017 and updated in 2024. The meeting on June 20, 2024, had already decided that a harmonized guideline was needed, and the PMU Committee, including representatives from several key organizations, worked to finalize these.

The PMU Committee met twice in December 2024 and January 2025, also inviting analytics tool developers like Electric Power Group and GE to get their input. As a result of their discussions, the draft guidelines for a unified approach to placing PMUs in the Indian grid were finalized. These guidelines identify optimized locations and data signals for PMUs. The locations specified in the guidelines are intended to provide adequate observability for the grid, and the guidelines will standardize how and where PMUs are installed.

During the meeting, it was emphasized that the new PMU guidelines align with existing CERC guidelines, so no changes are needed in the CERC standards. The Chairperson, CEA, mentioned the need to avoid duplication of technical guidelines between CEA and CERC to prevent confusion. It was decided that CERC should reference CEA’s technical guidelines in its regulations.

The meeting also discussed whether PMUs are manufactured in India. Representatives from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and POWERGRID confirmed that Valiant Communications Ltd and Hitachi Energy manufacture PMUs domestically. NPL offers testing facilities for these units and has been supporting indigenous development. However, there is no existing facility in India for testing PMU data transfer according to IEEE standards. NPL offered to provide this testing if needed.

CPRI, another testing agency, noted that it currently cannot test PMU communication compliance under IEEE standards but can test IEDs under a different standard. No PMU manufacturers have approached CPRI yet for this service.

POWERGRID representatives said the number of PMUs required under the URTDSM Phase-II project might reduce from 4000 to between 2000 and 2500 based on the new guidelines. They were asked to consult manufacturers regarding their capacity to meet the demand.

The guidelines mandate that PMUs be installed at only one end of the transmission lines, and future project tenders must clearly specify PMU requirements at substations. The guidelines will apply to upcoming transmission projects under both tariff-based competitive bidding (TBCB) and regulated tariff mechanisms (RTM).

The finalized guidelines are to be implemented immediately and will standardize the approach to PMU placement and data telemetry across India’s power grid.