FPGA Based Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) for Smartgrid PART 1

by Dadan · March 1, 2017

FPGA based Phasor Measurement Unit, or PMU is my final project for my thesis. This device is actually simple, we have to measure the voltage and current from the Grid. well its not actually at the high voltage but here we made lab scale tools. The job of PMU itself is sampling the current and voltage value, and then giving them the time stamp (also called synchrophasor). its just that simple.

for the ADC we’re using here is 8 bit ADC, and GPS modul. The 8-bit ADC transmit the conversion value by 8 bit parallel (not serial) so it needs only 1 clock to get data from the output buffer. The GPS will send the data through UART Communication protocol, so we have to make a UART receiver in the FPGA.

simply the main block of PMU is shown on figure below

all the data should be sent via uart to the computer so we can save it and plot into a graph, or we can use the real-time data to fault analysis of the smart grid.

Current measurement using a current sensor ACS712, sensing value will be sent into ADC and the result will be sent via uart from FPGA.

this is the prototype of the PMU we made, before we connect into the AC source, we have to give a stepdown converter using a transformer. then the sinusoidal voltage will be sampled by ADC.

this is the picture how to testing the PMU. The GPS must be put into a free obstacle area, so it can get the satellite data easily. this is the second trial, we use oven as the load.