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DOE OSTI2026

Feature-Based PMU Event Classification under Variable PMU Participation and Overlapping Events

Danovo Energy Solution's presented its paper named: Feature-Based PMU Event Classification under Variable PMU Participation and Overlapping Events at the 2026 Georgia Tech Fault & Disturbance Analysis Conference. The full paper can be found at OSTI ID# 3169150 Paper Abstract—Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) stream time synchronized, high-resolution measurements from the grid, enabling data-driven techniques for event detection and classification. Accurate event classification improves grid reliability and stability. Events can be detected by varying numbers of PMUs and exhibit different durations depending on the event type. This variability challenges standard classifiers that require uniform input sizes. Moreover, multiple events may coincide, which increases classification complexity. Standard classifiers assign each instance to the class with the highest predicted probability, whereas overlapping events may exhibit comparable probabilities across multiple classes. In this study, to handle data size variability, we extract a wide range of time–frequency domain features from all available PMUs for each event into a fixed-length vector, facilitating the application of standard machine learning classifiers, including Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, Support Vector Machine, and Multilayer Perceptron. To account for overlapping events, a probabilistic post-processing step is applied. For a given data instance, if multiple predicted class probabilities exceed 30% and the differences between them are less than 10%, the event is assigned to multiple classes. Experiments using real-world PMU data demonstrate that the Random Forest and XGBoost models achieve the highest accuracy, while the proposed post-processing method yields perfect classification performance on external unseen test sets.

Nematirad, Reza [Danova Energy Solutions]↗

DOE OSTI2022

Line Faults Classification Using Machine Learning on Three Phase Voltages Extracted from Large Dataset of PMU Measurements

An end-to-end supervised learning method is developed to classify transmission line faults in a twoyear field-recorded dataset that includes synchronized measurements of three-phase voltages recorded by 38 Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) sparsely located in in the US Western Grid interconnection. Statistical analysis is performed to extract features from this large dataset to train Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifiers initially. The training further leverages a simulated dataset from a synthetic grid with 12 PMUs to increase the number of faults of types infrequently seen in the field-recorded dataset. Training the classification models with the combined dataset resulted in a classification accuracy of 97.7%. This is a significant improvement over 89.7% to 92.5% accuracy obtained by relying on the field-recorded dataset alone.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2026

Feature-Based PMU Event Classification under Variable PMU Participation and Overlapping Events

This paper is the basis for a presentation help at the 2026 Georgia Tech Fault & Disturbance Analysis Conference, which can be found at OSTI # 3168287 Paper Abstract—Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) stream time synchronized, high-resolution measurements from the grid, enabling data-driven techniques for event detection and classification. Accurate event classification improves grid reliability and stability. Events can be detected by varying numbers of PMUs and exhibit different durations depending on the event type. This variability challenges standard classifiers that require uniform input sizes. Moreover, multiple events may coincide, which increases classification complexity. Standard classifiers assign each instance to the class with the highest predicted probability, whereas overlapping events may exhibit comparable probabilities across multiple classes. In this study, to handle data size variability, we extract a wide range of time–frequency domain features from all available PMUs for each event into a fixed-length vector, facilitating the application of standard machine learning classifiers, including Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, Support Vector Machine, and Multilayer Perceptron. To account for overlapping events, a probabilistic post-processing step is applied. For a given data instance, if multiple predicted class probabilities exceed 30% and the differences between them are less than 10%, the event is assigned to multiple classes. Experiments using real-world PMU data demonstrate that the Random Forest and XGBoost models achieve the highest accuracy, while the proposed post-processing method yields perfect classification performance on external unseen test sets.

Nematirad, Reza [Danovo Energy Solutions]↗

DOE OSTI2022

Weakly Supervised Event Classification Using Imperfect Real-world PMU Data with Scarce Labels

This paper studies event classification using imperfect real-world phasor measurement unit (PMU) data with scarce event types (labels). By investigating the real-world PMU data, it is observed that most real-world PMU data's event type is unknown, which makes it challenging to directly use such dataset to build event classifiers as existing classification techniques require high-quality training data with known event type (i.e., label). To address this challenge, a weakly supervised learning based event classification approach is developed, which can use noisy and low-quality PMU data for the training. First, data quality issues are fixed using data preprocessing techniques and then event features are constructed from the PMU data. Using these features, a series of labeling functions are learnt to generate initial estimates of the labels of large amounts of unlabeled PMU data. As the labeling functions are learnt using the same data with scarce labels, the label estimates from the labeling functions can be correlated, noisy, and bias. To enhance these initial estimates, a generative model is developed to characterize the dependencies among the estimated labels, based on which better labels are obtained for training event classifiers. Numerical experiments using the real-world dataset from the Western Interconnection of the U.S. power transmission grid show that the proposed weakly supervised event classifier trained using the dataset with only 5% labeled data can achieve 78.4% classification accuracy.

Liu, Yunchuan↗

DOE OSTI2023

Model Agnostic Bayesian Framework for Online Anomaly/Event Detection in PMU Data

Phasor measurement units (PMU) are integral to the modernization and automation plan of the electric power industry. A PMU data signature contains system-level events (e.g., faults, generation/load change, etc.) and any measurement/device-related errors. Therefore, the reliable and resilient operation of power systems is equivalent to the quality of the PMU data and the situation awareness provided by its data signature. Despite recent progress, current state-of-the-art methods are not fool-proof and have certain limitations tracing an error/abnormality to sensor sub-components and grid systems. This is because of technical challenges imposed by the scarcity of the labeled information, loss of data quality, and non-stationarity of data. In this paper, we consider the online PMU data stream as an output of a stochastic process and pose the anomaly/event detection as a changepoint detection problem dealing with detecting parameter changes in the underlying stochastic processes. The proposed model-agnostic framework relies on: (a) feature extraction utilizing the minimum volume enclosing ellipsoids (MVEE) method from raw PMU observations and (b) a Bayesian framework of changepoint detection. The validity of the proposed methodology is discussed through numerical experiments on real-world utility-scale PMU data.

Hossain, Ramij Raja↗

DOE OSTI2022

Data-Driven PMU Noise Emulation Framework using Gradient-Penalty-Based Wasserstein GAN

Availability of phasor measurement unit (PMUs) data has led to research on data-driven algorithms for event monitoring, control and ensuring stability of the grid. Unavailability of infrequent critical event field PMU data with component failures is driving the need to generate realistic synthetic PMU data for research. The synthetic data from power system simulation software often neglect noise profiles of received phasors, thus creating some discrepancies between real PMU data and synthetic ones. To address this issue, this work presents an initial study on the noise characteristics of PMUs, as well as presenting models for recreating their unique noise signatures. The proposed method, utilizing the Wasserstein generative adversarial network with gradient penalty (WGAN-GP) architecture, provides an excellent benchmark for matching the noise distribution. One can use a well-learned GAN model to draw noise signatures from a distribution that seemingly mirrors the real PMU noise distribution, while also being able to be detached from the PMU data once the training is done. Based on the observed results and employed data-driven methodology, it is expected that the proposed methods can be adapted to replicate the behavior of other sensors, providing research and other applications with a tool for data synthesis and sensor characterization.

PMU↗

DOE OSTI2023

Optimal PMU design based on sampling model and sensitivity analysis

The precise measurements of the synchrophasor and frequency from phasor measurement units (PMUs) are widely used in power grid applications. With the improvement of the technique, applications always require stable dynamic performance and higher accuracy for the synchrophasor and frequency measurements, which is challenging for PMU development. To evaluate the contribution of PMU hardware to measurement accuracy, this paper proposes a general-purpose sampling model to analyze the measurement error. In the proposed sampling model, a strict mathematical derivation is derived, where its error is purely determined by the parameters of the PMU hardware. The sensitivity analysis is carried out by three methods, including mathematical analysis, computer simulation, and variance-based sensitivity analysis. Through the sensitivity analysis, this paper establishes the systematic formulation and the inclusion of synchrophasor, frequency, and ROCOF. Experimental results based on the real-world testbench involving distribution-level PMUs match the mathematical analysis conclusion, which verifies the correctness of the general-purpose sampling model. Furthermore, a strategy for the optimal PMU design is proposed, which could guide PMU design in the future.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2022

Robust Event Classification Using Imperfect Real-world PMU Data

Here, this paper studies robust event classification using imperfect real-world phasor measurement unit (PMU) data. By analyzing the real-world PMU data, we find it is challenging to directly use this dataset for event classifiers due to the low data quality observed in PMU measurements and event logs. To address these challenges, we develop a novel machine learning framework for training robust event classifiers, which consists of three main steps: data preprocessing, fine-grained event data extraction, and feature engineering. Specifically, the data preprocessing step addresses the data quality issues of PMU measurements (e.g., bad data and missing data); in the fine-grained event data extraction step, a model-free event detection method is developed to accurately localize the events from the inaccurate event timestamps in the event logs; and the feature engineering step constructs the event features based on the patterns of different event types, in order to improve the performance and the interpretability of the event classifiers. Based on the proposed framework, we develop a workflow for event classification using the real-world PMU data streaming into the system in real time. Using the proposed framework, robust event classifiers can be efficiently trained based on many off-the-shelf lightweight machine learning models. Numerical experiments using the real-world dataset from the Western Interconnection of the U.S power transmission grid show that the event classifiers trained under the proposed framework can achieve high classification accuracy while being robust against low-quality data.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

DOE OSTI2024

Event Detection and Classification Using Machine Learning Applied to PMU Data for the Western US Power System

Smart grid technology enhances our comprehension and reliability of the power grid, leveraging Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data—time-synchronized, high-frequency measurements gathered across the US power grid. This paper employs machine learning techniques to effectively analyze the vast PMU data in Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS) for power grid event detection and classification. Analyzing several months of real-world PMU data, the paper focuses on machine learning for fast, precise event detection and classification, corroborated by utility event logs. Practical challenges like feature extraction, dimensionality reduction, and model selection are addressed. A novel feature yielding improved results is discovered, and a supplementary algorithm for detecting small power grid faults is developed. The final algorithm is validated using a month-long real PMU data set, demonstrating its capability in accurately identifying power grid events in near real-time.

machine learning, event detection, PMU↗

DOE OSTI2023

Improving the PMU Standard

The Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is perhaps the first representational measurement widely dispersed in the electric power system. Its usefulness has been demonstrated on many occasions. It is shown in this paper that the excellent performance of the PMU is a tribute to PMU makers, and not attributable to the standards that are supposed to specify the performance. The IEEE and IEC standards illustrate, by means of a “reference model,” how a PMU can be made. Both standards base the model on two fundamental conceptual errors. Without these errors several improvements in performance could be made. The standards should be revised to remove the restrictive “guidance” that the reference model presently offers, and to correct the text so that the appropriate concepts are presented.

Phasor Measurement, reference model↗

DOE OSTI2022

A Cross-Domain Optimization Framework of PMU and Communication Placement for Multidomain Resiliency and Cost Reduction

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) play a crucial role in real-time monitoring and control of power grids. They rely on a communication network to transfer measurement data to the phasor data concentrator (PDC) for further processing and analysis. In this paper, a resilient cross-domain PMU and communication link placement method for minimizing the overall installation cost of the wide-area measurement system (WAMS) is proposed. Here, the main idea is to break down the barrier between the power grid domain and the communication domain, and consider the impact of one when design the other. The PMU placement in the power grid domain takes into account the cost of communication links by generating multiple solutions with equally minimum PMU costs for communication link placement evaluation. On the other hand, the communication link placement problem reduces the cost by customizing the routing policies based on the different roles of PMUs in grid observability. The proposed WAMS design is capable of withstanding any single component failure in the power domain (PMU failure or power branch failure) or in the communication domain (communication link failure or PDC failure). Numerical study on the IEEE 57-bus system reveals that the developed cross-domain optimization framework can significantly reduce the overall installation cost of WAMS while attaining multi-domain resiliency.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2022

Real-time Event Detection Using Rank Signatures of Real-world PMU Data

Timely detection of power system events is a crucial task, which can facilitate the implementation of remedial actions to improve reliability, resiliency, and security of the system. Meanwhile, the widespread deployment of phasor measurement units (PMUs) makes it possible to develop data-driven event detection techniques. However, relying purely on data without incorporating domain knowledge for the event detection task in power systems poses substantial security and stability risks due to issues associated with data misinterpretation and model accuracy. In this regard, we propose a real-time event detection method using real-world PMU data by incorporating domain knowledge to adequately capture the event signatures. Specifically, we track the change in rank signatures of PMU data to accurately localize the events. To optimize the detection process, we incorporate an offline Bayesian optimization algorithm to tune the parameters by efficiently searching for the best values. The experiments using the real-world PMU dataset from a U.S. interconnection show that the proposed event detection approach can efficiently detect the events from PMU data streams with high accuracy.

Ghasemkhani, Amir↗

DOE OSTI2022

Learning Latent Interactions for Event Identification via Graph Neural Networks and PMU Data

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are being widely installed on power systems, providing a unique opportunity to enhance wide-area situational awareness. One essential application is the use of PMU data for real-time event identification. However, how to take full advantage of all PMU data in event identification is still an open problem. Thus, we propose a novel method that performs event identification by mining interaction graphs among different PMUs. The proposed interaction graph inference method follows an entirely data-driven manner without knowing the physical topology. Moreover, unlike previous works that treat interactive learning and event identification as two different stages, our method learns interactions jointly with the identification task, thereby improving the accuracy of graph learning and ensuring seamless integration between the two stages. Moreover, to capture multi-scale event patterns, a dilated inception-based method is investigated to perform feature extraction of PMU data. To test the proposed data-driven approach, a large real-world dataset from tens of PMU sources and the corresponding event logs have been utilized in this work. We report numerical results validate that our method has higher classification accuracy compared to previous methods.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

Changes Required in the PMU standards

The Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is a representational measuring instrument that gives time-stamped measurements of the power system on the assumption that the measurand can be represented as sinusoidal. However, two standards defining the measured quantities unnecessarily corrupt the results and limit the capabilities of the PMU, and are beginning to tax communications systems. This paper examines the two mistakes in the PMU standards, and proposes a solution.

PMU measurement, phase, phasor, measurement theory↗

DOE OSTI2021

Unsupervised Power System Event Detection and Classification Using Unlabeled PMU Data

This paper proposes a novel data-driven power system event detection and classification method based on 5TB of actual PMU measurements collected from the US western interconnect. Firstly, a set of comprehensive power quality rules are proposed to pre-filter the raw data and extract the regions of interest (ROI). Six distinct event categories are defined and corresponding patterns are chosen as references. Meanwhile, detailed characteristics of patterns are summarized to enhance our understanding of the actual events. Then, the time-independent feature vectors are generated by extracting the statistical, temporal, and spectral features from the raw time-series data. Furthermore, an ensemble model is proposed to cluster the events by combining multiple K-means clustering models using a voting strategy. Besides, both system-level and PMU-level clustering models are developed. The accuracy and robustness of the event detection method are further improved through interactive evaluation of the two-level clustering results. This paper summarizes the actual characteristics of each event category and provides a reliable basis for accurate label generation. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed event detection and classification method.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2021

Unsupervised Power System Event Detection and Classification Using Unlabeled PMU Data

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2024

PMU Data Quality and Sensor Health Monitoring

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) play a critical role in the evolution of the electric power industry by providing high-precision, real-time monitoring of essential power system metrics. However, effectively detecting abnormalities and critical events from PMU data is a complex task, complicated by intricate temporal patterns, a scarcity of labeled data for training algo- rithms, and constraints on online computational power. In this study, we apply TranAD, an innovative algorithm that combines transformer architectures with the refinement of adversarial learning, to both synthetic and real-world PMU datasets for developing a data quality and sensor online health monitoring platform for utilities. Our findings reveal that TranAD not only provides efficient detection and localization but also enhances the detail with which abnormalities are detected, marking a a significant step forward in the field of clean data acquisition processes for power system monitoring

deep neural network, machine learning (ML)↗

DOE OSTI2023

A Practical On-line Framework for a Modified Energy Detector by Whitening Ambient PMU Data

A key application of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) is power system oscillation detection. An energy detector is a straightforward detection method, but setting thresholds requires extensive and time consuming baselining of data. This paper proposes a novel on-line method of whitening PMU measurements supporting a framework for detecting forced oscillations without requiring extensive baselining. An example of 24 hours of actual PMU data illustrates how a forced oscillation is very visible in the energy signal of the whitened data, while being hard to detect in the colored ambient noise. With this framework, the statistical theory for setting thresholds without baselining is much more straightforward and is the focus of future work.

Xu, Zikai↗