  This paper proposes a fully decentralized adaptive re-weighted state
estimation (DARSE) scheme for power systems via network gossiping. The enabling
technique is the proposed Gossip-based Gauss-Newton (GGN) algorithm, which
allows to harness the computation capability of each area (i.e. a database
server that accrues data from local sensors) to collaboratively solve for an
accurate global state. The DARSE scheme mitigates the influence of bad data by
updating their error variances online and re-weighting their contributions
adaptively for state estimation. Thus, the global state can be estimated and
tracked robustly using near-neighbor communications in each area. Compared to
other distributed state estimation techniques, our communication model is
flexible with respect to reconfigurations and resilient to random failures as
long as the communication network is connected. Furthermore, we prove that the
Jacobian of the power flow equations satisfies the Lipschitz condition that is
essential for the GGN algorithm to converge to the desired solution.
Simulations of the IEEE-118 system show that the DARSE scheme can estimate and
track online the global power system state accurately, and degrades gracefully
when there are random failures and bad data.
