The PMU placement problem is an optimization problem abstracted from an approach to supervising an electrical power system. The power system is modeled as a graph, and adequate supervision of the system requires that the voltage at each node and the current through each edge be observable. A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is a monitor that can be placed at a node to directly observe the voltage at that node, as well as the current and its phase through all incident edges. The PMU placement problem is to place PMUs at a minimum number of nodes so that the entire electric power system is observed. A new simpler definition of graph observability and several complexity results for the PMU placement problem are presented. The PMU placement problem is shown to be NP-complete even for planar bipartite graphs. Several fundamental properties of PMU placements are proven, including the property that a minimum PMU placement requires no more than 1/3 of the nodes in a connected graph of at least 3 nodes.