Electricity + Control August 2017

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Using AMI Data to Analyse the Safety of the Distribution Network

Desmond Mabilo, Siemens

AMI systems can offer much more than the ability to accurately produce a bill to customers on their electricity consumption.

I n recent years there has been a great drive, in utilities, to deploy Advanced Metering In- frastructure (AMI) systems, commonly known as smart meters [1]. They are called smart meters in a sense that they not only measure electrical power consumed by utility customers but they can record events such as power outages, tampering etc. They are fitted with communications modules allowing them to transmit the measured data to utility data centres via telecommunications net- works, allowing utilities to receive meter data in almost real time. The initial driver to deploy AMI systems was to ensure accurate collection of consumption data from customer points, ensuring accurate billing of electricity usage. This is a great improvement to the previously used method, where utility per- sonnel were sent to customer sites to collect consumption data, introducing human error in the recording process of the consumption data. With AMI systems, utilities can introduce software sys- tems which collect and analyse the received me- ter data, and generate bills automatically and send to customers for payment. The deployment of AMI systems, introduc- es value to utilities, by coming forth as a Smart Grid enabler. This is initially realised by introducing web and mobile applications where customers can view their historical power consumption, and see the impact of their usage on the grid. These platforms can influence customers to change or optimise their power consumption to reduce the load on the grid. Utilities can unlock further the potential of deployed AMI systems, by analysing

the collected data to get an understanding of the performance of the distribution network infrastruc- ture.This may include analysis of the power quality delivered to customers and analysis of equipment (transformer) loading at distribution level. In this article we will focus on describing how data from AMI systems can be used to analyse equipment loading on the distribution network, predict po- tential for failure, and help with preventive main- tenance and right sizing of distribution network components. This analysis will greatly help utilities in that failures on the distribution network equip- ment not only result in immediate outages for cus- tomers and large costs to utilities, but can present a serious safety hazard to living creatures in the vicinity and damage to property. Overview of AMI enabling Smart Grid Figure 1 is an overview of how AMI systems are deployed by utilities, integrating them to Meter Data Management (MDM) Systems and facilitat- ing utilities to get more value from the systems by introducing Analytics in the architecture. From the diagram we can see that an AMI system is made up of the Meter (Industrial, Commercial and Resi- dential), the telecommunications infrastructure to transmit the meter data and events, and the Head End System (HES) for collection of the meter data and storage in databases. The MDM system per- forms synchronisations functions with Customer Information Systems (CIS), to create a relationship between AMI systems data and utility custom- er information during installation. Thereafter the MDM performs the processing of data received

abbreviations AMI – Advanced Metering Infrastructure CIS – Customer Information Systems ELM – Equipment (Transformer) Load Management HES – Head End System MDM – Meter Data Management SDP – Service Delivery Point VEE – Validation, Estimation, Editing

4 Electricity + Control

AUGUST 2017