The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has announced the issuance of comprehensive “Guidelines on Unified Philosophy for Placement of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) in Indian Grid.” These guidelines aim to harmonize the requirements for PMU installation across the nation’s power transmission infrastructure, enhancing grid monitoring and reliability. These guidelines were published on March 19, 2025.
A dedicated PMU Committee, chaired by Member (Power System), CEA, was constituted on October 4, 2024. The committee held two meetings, on December 5, 2024, and January 27, 2025, to deliberate and finalize these guidelines.
Based on extensive discussions and recommendations from the committee, a comprehensive report titled “Guidelines on Unified Philosophy for Placement of PMUs in Indian Grid” has been finalized. Subsequently, a meeting chaired by the Chairperson of CEA was held on March 13, 2025, to discuss the implementation strategy for the committee’s report.
Key Highlights of the Guidelines
The approved guidelines will be adopted for the implementation of the URTDSM (Phase-II) project and all upcoming schemes. The applicability of these guidelines is as follows:
These guidelines will be applicable to all upcoming Tariff-based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) and Regulated Tariff Mechanism (RTM) based projects. They will also apply to projects (through TBCB or RTM) for which the tender has been published before the date of issuance of these guidelines but for which the price bids have not yet been submitted.
For transmission schemes where bidding was submitted on or after December 27, 2022 (the date of notification of CEA Construction Standards, 2022) but before January 19, 2024 (the date of notification of CERC Guidelines on Interfacing requirements, 2024), PMUs will be installed as per the Request for Proposal (RfP) document.
For transmission schemes where bids were submitted on or after January 19, 2024, PMUs will be installed as per the RfP, duly considering the CERC Interface Guidelines.
The “Guidelines on Unified Philosophy for Placement of Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) in Indian Grid” will come into effect from the date of their issuance, which is March 19, 2025.
The implementation of these unified guidelines for PMU deployment is a significant step towards modernizing India’s power grid. PMUs provide high-resolution, synchronized measurements of electrical parameters across the grid, enabling better situational awareness, faster fault detection, and improved grid stability.
