Summary The conventional optimal PMU placement (OPP) methods minimize the number of PMUs along with guarantying full observability of the system. However, various OPP schemes with the same number of PMUs obtained for a power system have different performances in emergency conditions. Cascading outages as the major cause of recent large blackouts cancel out full observability of the system and decrease situational awareness. In this paper, the OPA model previously developed to simulate power system blackouts is modified in order to include observability analysis through the progress of the cascading outages. The modified process is performed in turn for a given set of OPP schemes. To rank these schemes, a criterion is proposed as a monetary value using produced data by the modified OPA model. Scalability of the proposed procedure is investigated in two test systems. Simulations show that although considering N‐1 criterion in finding optimal PMU schemes decreases the consequences of transmission line cascading outages, it is not financially reasonable and does not lead to better performance of the OPP scheme. In other words, it is better to use OPP schemes in normal condition.

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