112 American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) ISSN (Print) 2313-4410, ISSN (Online) 2313-4402 © Global Society of Scientific Research and Researchers http://asrjetsjournal.org/ Optimal Placement of Phasor Measurement Unit on Electrical Grid Using a Hybrid Technique Bolanle Oduntan a *, Funso Ariyo b , Sijuwade Akintade c a,b Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria c Department Science Laboratory Technology, NILEST, Zaria, Postal Code 810107 Nigeria a Email: bolanleoduntan@yahoo.com b Email: funsoariyo@yahoo.com c Email: sijtade@gmail.com Abstract This paper presents a methodology to determine the optimal location of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in any network to make it observable. This proposed methodology is based on network connectivity information for the optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) that minimizes the cost of installation and provide the entire power system observability. The method is based on hybridizing the Particle Swarm Optimization and tabu-search (PSO-TS) algorithm. The tabu-lists are used within the PSO algorithm: the first one aims to differentiate the best solutions obtained by particles while the second prevent local optimal solutions non-respecting the constraints. The proposed algorithm is tested on IEEE 14-bus and IEEE 30-bus systems. Keywords: Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs); Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO); Tabu-search (TS); hybrid method; Network connectivity. 1. Introduction In modern world, countless countries around the world are affected by power failures, which are caused by factors such as lack of investment in power system infrastructure, bad maintenance culture and increase in load at the consumer end which stresses the power transmission and distribution system. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Corresponding author.