Power Grid Parameter Estimation Without Phase Measurements: Theory and Empirical Validation

Reliable integration and operation of renewable distributed energy resources requires accurate distribution grid models. However, obtaining precise models by field inspection is often prohibitively expensive, given their large scale and the ongoing nature of grid operations. To address this challenge, considerable efforts have been devoted to harnessing abundant consumption data for automatic model inference. The primary result of the paper is that, while the impedance of a line or a network can be estimated without synchronized phase angle measurements in a consistent way, the admittance cannot. Furthermore, a detailed statistical analysis is presented, quantifying the expected estimation errors of four prevalent admittance estimation methods. Such errors constitute fundamental model inference limitations that cannot be resolved with more data. These findings are empirically validated using synthetic data and real measurements from the town of Walenstadt, Switzerland, confirming the theory. The results contribute to our understanding of grid estimation limitations and uncertainties, offering guidance for both practitioners and researchers in the pursuit of more reliable and cost-effective solutions.