The Use and Challenges of Precise Time in Electric Power SynchroPhasor Systems

Today, the principal way that power system owners and operators use precision timing is for protection system operation, event analysis, and in synchrophasor applications. Synchrophasor applications have among the most stringent precision time and time interval requirements due to high frequency reporting and the wide area distribution of phasor measurement units. This paper will describe the analysis of precision time requirements for some principal synchrophasor applications, and outline some of the efforts under way by the North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI) and complementary industry standards activities in order to address the broad challenge of improving timing usage and reliability by electric industry users.