Wide-area power system stabilizer（WPSS）is one of the most effective methods to damp inter-area low frequency oscillation in power system.Remote synchro-phasor data of phasor measurement unit（PMU）as feed back input of WPSS must be considered time delay of remote signal when applying it to real projects.In the long term，time delay in power network usually presents certain random distribution characteristics in certain range.However，as the remote signals usually take time to be transmit PMU data via the internet through a series of routers to a control center，a key step in wide-area damping controller design is time delay compensation.Especially when WPSS is implemented in a real project，a time delay compensator to deal with time-varying delay should be designed，as in a long term，the delay in power network is time-varying randomly.An adaptive sectional time delay compensator is designed.The time delay is divided into several intervals and time delay compensators are designed for each interval.Then the time delay compensator will adaptively select the appropriate interval compensator to use according to the time delay measured online，so that optimal compensation can be reached.The method for dividing the time delay and the rule of adaptively adjust of time delay compensator are also discussed.And the compensator is illustrated with a 2-area 4-machine power system.The numerical simulation results on different operation modes show the feasibility，effectiveness and robustness of the compensator.The real time digital system（RTDS）test results also show that the proposed method is feasible and effective.This method considers the variation of time delay in a long time，and is applicable in practical engineering.