The automated real time control of an electrical network is achieved through the estimation of its state using phasor measurement units. Given an undirected graph representing the network, we study the problem of finding the minimum number of phasor measurement units to place on the edges such that the graph is fully observed. This problem is also known as the Power Edge Set problem, a variant of the Power Dominating Set problem. It is naturally modeled using an iteration‐indexed binary linear program, whose size turns out to be too large for practical purposes. We use a fixed‐point argument to remove the iteration indices and obtain a more compact bilevel formulation. We then reformulate the latter to a single‐level mixed‐integer linear program, which performs better than the natural formulation. Lastly, we provide an algorithm that solves the bilevel program directly and much faster than a commercial solver can solve the previous models. We also discuss robust variants and extensions of the problem. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 68(2), 104–120 2016