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It has become a fundamental component of the electrical networking system, both in residential and industrial settings, to adopt advanced power meter architecture. With traditional smart meters, a bi-channel communication network is established between homes and utility companies, providing consumers with information regarding their daily power consumption. Manual meter reading, however, may result in inaccurate meter logging and incorrect billing criteria, which will lead to an increase in overhead costs associated with deploying meter readers and billing power consumption for each site within metropolitan and large urban areas. Moreover, the current smart metering system does not enable consumers to predict their future energy consumption, only providing insights into their current power consumption and accumulative costs. In order to address these issues, we propose a novel intelligent Software-Defined Control (SDC) super cluster with a comprehensive architecture based on SDN routing capabilities, which differs from conventional commercial smart meters. The developed micro cluster is enhanced to run full availability and high performance compared to traditional metering system. Moreover it deploys intelligent capabilities to predict the consumption of power per home, we implemented a polynomial model experimentally. Furthermore, we propose an intelligent Software-Defined Controller Gateway (SDN-GW) to serve as a traffic predictor between distributed metering nodes and the cloud data warehouse, eliminating congestion caused by the large volumes of traffic data generated periodically by the metering nodes. Based on the experimental results, the software-defined control system was estimated to have 97.75% percent accuracy in power prediction, and the traffic flow predictor demonstrated 98.79% percent accuracy in network traffic prediction. Furthermore, the proposed SDN-GW achieved 29.37% power consumption rate compared to standard routing engine.

With the emergence of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) in utility systems like electricity, water, and gas networks, data collection has become more prevalent. While data collection in these systems has numerous advantages, it also raises concerns about privacy as it can potentially reveal sensitive information about users. To address this issue, we propose a Bayesian approach to control the adversarial inference and mitigate the physical-layer privacy problem in CPSs. Specifically, we develop a control strategy for the worst-case scenario where an adversary has perfect knowledge of the user’s control strategy. For finite state-space problems, we derive the fixed-point Bellman’s equation for an optimal stationary strategy and discuss a few practical approaches to solve it using optimization-based control design. Addressing the computational complexity, we propose a reinforcement learning approach based on the Actor-Critic architecture. To also support smart meter privacy research, we present a publicly accessible “Co-LivEn” dataset with comprehensive electrical measurements of appliances in a co-living household. Using this dataset, we benchmark the proposed reinforcement learning approach. The results demonstrate its effectiveness in reducing privacy leakage. Our work provides valuable insights and practical solutions for managing adversarial inference in cyber-physical systems, with a particular focus on enhancing privacy in smart meter applications.

Detecting energy consumption anomalies is a popular topic of industrial research, but there is a noticeable lack of research reported in the literature on energy consumption anomalies for road lighting systems. However, there is a need for such research because the lighting system, a key element of the Smart City concept, creates new monitoring opportunities and challenges. This paper examines algorithms based on the deep learning method using the Autoencoder model with LSTM and 1D Convolutional networks for various configurations and training periods. The evaluation of the algorithms was carried out based on real data from an extensive lighting control system. A practical approach was proposed using real-time, unsupervised algorithms employing limited computing resources that can be implemented in industrial devices designed to control intelligent city lighting. An anomaly detection algorithm based on classic LSTM networks, single-layer and multi-layer, was used for comparison purposes. Error matrix calculus was used to assess the quality of the models. It was shown that based on the Autoencoder method, it is possible to construct an algorithm that correctly detects anomalies in power measurements of lighting systems, and it is possible to build a model so that the algorithm works correctly regardless of the season of the year.

Smart Energy (SE) has emerged as a critical technology in tackling global challenges like climate change while addressing the rising energy demands driven by today’s data-intensive industrial revolution. SE integrates information and communication technologies into energy systems, optimizing them to meet these challenges effectively. At the core of SE operations are smart meters, playing a fundamental role in ensuring efficient functionality. These devices collect data, which is then leveraged to derive Business Intelligence (BI) for operations across the entire spectrum, from the sensing infrastructure to the cloud, primarily utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) technology framework. With the increasing complexity of operations and the growing demand for optimization and enhanced functionality, the SE technology stack is evolving to integrate across all layers and domains. This integration has led to the stratification of computational load across IoT layers, intensifying the dependence on smart meter data for BI. Consequently, smart meters themselves have evolved to become more functional and complex. This paper’s novelty lies in its comprehensive exploration of the integration of BI with smart meter data. It delves into various aspects, including the different layers of intelligent operations within SE systems, the current state of the art, and diverse implementations of smart meters and their applications across operational locations, ranging from consumers to fog computing. The paper concludes by identifying research gaps and future directions, offering insights into the evolving requirements for the next generation of SE systems and the necessary adaptations in smart metering infrastructure to support these roles. This work contributes to a better understanding of the evolving landscape of data and computation in the context of SE, facilitating more efficient and effective energy management solutions.

Smart meters are continuously being deployed in several countries as a step in the direction of modernizing the power grid. Smart meters allow for automatic electricity consumption reporting to energy providers to facilitate billing and demand-based power generation. However, research has shown that such high resolution reporting to suppliers can potentially be used to invade consumers’ privacy; by identifying and predicting their behavior based on their consumption readings. This work presents a new protocol to preserve users’ privacy while maintaining the benefits of smart grids. The proposed method utilizes different techniques like randomization, masking, and differential privacy to build the scheme. The proposed method is shown to be more efficient compared to previous work in terms of performance and communication overhead. The implementation, simulation, and analysis are performed on datasets of real smart meters readings of households and electric vehicle chargers.

With the advancements of the battery energy storage systems (BESSs), reduction of their manufacturing costs and government subsidies, the BESS uptake is likely to increase rapidly in power distribution networks. This paper investigates the effects of residential BESSs on low-voltage (LV) networks using the actual household load profiles equipped with BESS and solar-photovoltaic (PV) systems. The electricity consumption data collected via smart meters (2200 households with PV/BESS, 1950 households with PV only and 1000 households without a PV or a BESS) at different solar-PV penetration levels and network types are used to simulate real network operating scenarios. A real LV distribution network in Australia is analysed in DIgSILENT PowerFactory under different scenarios, such as, customers with and without a solar-PV/BESS, with a solar-PV but without a BESS, and without a solar-PV, by using both the power flow and quasi-dynamic simulation studies under balanced and the unbalanced network loading conditions. According to the study, customers experience large voltage excursions from solar-PV power exports, which could be resolved by the household BESS, provided that the BESS charging is coordinated with the solar-PV production. Moreover, quasi-dynamic simulation shows that the BESS could reduce the violation of the over-voltage limit during the solar peak hours (midday) by lowering the worst-case feeder voltage by 3%. Finally, extreme-event (high solar PV generation scenario) simulation shows that the implementation of the BESS controller to facilitate charging BESS during afternoon solar-PV export may reduce the negative grid impact and will assist to avoid network upgrades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the cross-sectional results of analyzes of authentic conducted disturbances introduced into public power networks by various types of loads installed at end users. The foundation for the research was a set of 260 identified cases of Power Line Communication (PLC) transmission disturbances based on the Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP) technology, which were recorded in the urban network of the distribution system operator covering over 400,000 smart meters. The paper presents a quantitative assessment of the share of loads that most often cause problems with transmission efficiency. Moreover, a qualitative assessment of the detected disturbance cases was carried out in terms of conditions relating to the structure of the power grid and real transmission levels and disturbance levels. The authors made a pioneering analysis in the so-called “communication path” where the PLC communication disturbance was identified, i.e., from the installation point of the PLC concentrator to the metering point where the energy meter, with which the connection was lost, was installed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For industrial application of load monitoring techniques, it is important to establish high-performance state estimators of low-cost and low frequency smart meters (SM) and sensors in a power system, which can run under resource-constrained computing units. Because household electronic appliances often tap power from fixed sockets, a finite state table for the corresponding sensors is suitable and convenient. However, SM in the main line may have an enormous state table. In this study, we propose a belief propagation (BP) algorithm to calculate the power consumption of electronic appliances in a semi-intrusive load monitoring (SILM) system whose SM and sensors have state tables with sizes varying largely. The novelty of the proposed method lies in a continuous approximation to a large state table and a switching scheme between discrete and continuous parts of the SILM system. With datasets from numerical simulations and a real-world experimental SILM system in a set of high-density school buildings within a secondary distribution network, the proposed BP algorithm is compared with relevant state-of-the-art algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithm achieves a percentage of error (8%), which outperforms the percentage achieved by the other methods, a linear state estimation of 99%, a hidden Markov model of 21%, and a full-discrete BP algorithm of 11%. In addition, the complexity of the proposed algorithm is the least of all methods, and the proposed algorithm can run by SoC on concentrators.

As one of the most successful industrial realizations of Internet of Things, a smart grid is a smart IoT system that deploys widespread smart meters to capture fine-grained data on residential power usage. Unfortunately, it always suffers diverse privacy attacks, which seriously increases the risk of violating the privacy of customers. Although some solutions have been proposed to address this privacy issue, most of them mainly rely on a trusted party and focus on the sanitization of metering masurements. Moreover, these solutions are vulnerable to advanced attacks. In this paper, we propose a decentralized mechanism for privacy-preserving computation in smart grid called DDP, which leaverages the differential privacy and extends the data sanitization from the value domain to the time domain. Specifically, we inject Laplace noise to the measurements at the end of each customer in a distributed manner, and then use a random permutation algorithm to shuffle the power measurement sequence, thereby enforcing differential privacy after aggregation and preventing the sensitive power usage mode informaton of the customers from being inferred by other parties. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DDP shows an outstanding performance in terms of privacy from the non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) attacks and utility by using two different error analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The network identification plays a very prominent role for the network operator to accomplish the various objectives such as state-estimation, monitoring, control, planning, and real-time analytics. The network structure varies from time-to-time and its details are often not available with the network operator. To address this issue, in this article, an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) based framework is presented herein to identify the network topology and line parameters using smart meter and microphasor measurement unit (μ) measurements. The presented algorithm is divided into two sections 1) approximate parameter evaluation through regression, to extract the partial topology information and 2) complete network topology identification through the ADMM framework. This algorithm accomplishes the objectives of identifying the network configuration, branch parameters (e.g., conductance and susceptance), and change in branch parameters. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented algorithm on the benchmarked IEEE 13-bus and IEEE 123-bus feeders under various operating scenarios. Furthermore, the presented framework illustrates excellent network identification even with the presence of the stochastic nature of renewable power generation. The presented algorithm exhibits an excellent performance even with the consideration of noise in both measurements. In addition, the comparative performance is carried out on the benchmarked unbalanced IEEE 13-bus and balanced IEEE 33-bus feeders to highlight the efficacy of the presented framework over the state-of-art framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an energy trading model basedon blockchain to manage and supervise the trading process. In the model, proof-of-energy reputation generation and proof-of-energy reputation consumption consensus mechanisms are proposed to solve the high computational cost and huge monetary investment issues created by the existing consensus mechanisms. Similarly, a mutual verifiable fairness mechanism based on time commitment is presented, which is introduced to prevent cheating attacks in the model. The proposed model’s performance is assessed using energy cost, peak-to-average ratio, and trust. The simulation results show that the energy cost of the proposed model decreases by 40%. The results for the load balancing depict that the values of peak-to-average ratio of the proposed model with 20% and 50% peak demand reduction are 6.88 and 3.50, which are lower than 9.17 of the benchmark model. Moreover, the proposed model’s results show satisfactory performance for privacy and security of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of smart meters has resulted in a large amount of data being generated. It is increasingly apparent that methods are required for allowing a variety of stakeholders to leverage the data in a manner that preserves the privacy of the consumers. The sector is scrambling to define policies, such as the so called ‘15/15 rule’, to respond to the need. However, the current policies fail to adequately guarantee privacy. In this paper, we address the problem of allowing third parties to apply $K$ -means clustering, obtaining customer labels and centroids for a set of load time series by applying the framework of differential privacy. We leverage the method to design an algorithm that generates differentially private synthetic load data consistent with the labeled data. We test our algorithm’s utility by answering summary statistics such as average daily load profiles for a 2-dimensional synthetic dataset and a real-world power load dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser osteotomy promises precise cutting and minor bone tissue damage. We proposed Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to monitor the ablation process toward our smart laser osteotomy approach. The OCT image is helpful to identify tissue type and provide feedback for the ablation laser to avoid critical tissues such as bone marrow and nerve. Furthermore, in the implementation, the tissue classifier’s accuracy is dependent on the quality of the OCT image. Therefore, image denoising plays an important role in having an accurate feedback system. A common OCT image denoising technique is the frame-averaging method. Inherent to this method is the need for multiple images, i.e., the more images used, the better the resulting image quality. However, this approach comes at the price of increased acquisition time and sensitivity to motion artifacts. To overcome these limitations, we applied a deep-learning denoising method capable of imitating the frame-averaging method. The resulting image had a similar image quality to the frame-averaging and was better than the classical digital filtering methods. We also evaluated if this method affects the tissue classifier model’s accuracy that will provide feedback to the ablation laser. We found that image denoising significantly increased the accuracy of the tissue classifier. Furthermore, we observed that the classifier trained using the deep learning denoised images achieved similar accuracy to the classifier trained using frame-averaged images. The results suggest the possibility of using the deep learning method as a pre-processing step for real-time tissue classification in smart laser osteotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the problem of proper flicker severity assessment by smart energy meters. Flicker severity occurs for a typical voltage “clipped cosine” distortion caused by operation of power electronic devices in the power grid. The voltage distortion caused only by higher harmonics does not cause voltage fluctuations, and therefore does not cause flicker. This article presents the research results for some models of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) smart meters, for which irregularities are observed in the voltage variation severity assessment if the typical voltage distortion occurs in the power grid. Possible mistakes in implementation of flickermeter signal chain as defined by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in smart meters that influence the measurement results have been explained. The analysis of the influence of typical voltage distortion on the indicator $P_{st}$ measurement has been carried out analytically and in numerical simulation studies using the modeled flickermeter signal chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the development and demonstration of an innovative business model where the value proposition for consumers/prosumers, aggregators and network operators are well maintained, this study assesses the performance of different aggregation control strategies for a distributed energy storage based residential virtual power plant (VPP). A special focus is given on the social welfare and network strength and their relation to energy storage capacity and power budgets allocation. The study is based on a real-life demonstration project, StoreNet where the basic self-consumption (SB-SC) control strategy has already been deployed. Analysing one-year measured data, it is observed that the implemented SB-SC approach allows 16%−19% electricity cost-saving, whereas the proposed VPP-bill minimisation approach can benefit from 37%−42% cost saving. This is also 7%−8% higher than the single home bill minimisation approach where the community does not participate in the VPP model. In contrast, the peak shaving approach is more favourable for the network operator. It reduces the load peak by 46.5%−64.7% and also drastically reduces the benefits for the customers and aggregator. Based on these studies and learning, some recommendations are made addressing the integration aspect of residential VPP and the future development of this concept for the local and wholesale energy markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An arc fault is an unintentional power discharge which may cause unexpected serious consequences such as fires. Under different voltage, current and loading conditions, along with unplanned locations, the occurrence times of arc faults are always random. Due to the randomness characteristic of arc fault, the measurement of the position and intensity of arc faults in real- time is a challenge to researchers. This brief proposes an analog- digital mixed-signal system applied to the arc fault detection in smart meters. The introduced digital system can automatically identify the load types and the filters of the reconfigurable analog circuit arranged according to the loads. The proposed digital system also implements the arc faults detecting threshold and its respective methods. A field-programmable analog array (FPAA) incorporates the involved analog functions, and an Altera Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) realizes the digital system. We test the performance of the proposed mixed-signal system under different load conditions with daily household appliances. The results show that the circuit is able to detect 99.6% of the arc faults during the experiment. The proposed mixed system provides a cost-effective package solution for accurately detecting the arc fault in modern smart meters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addressesthe problem of real-time state estimation in European-type four-wire low-voltage distribution networks with advanced metering infrastructure based on power line communication (PLC). The main drawback of this type of infrastructure is its high latency and a sequential data sampling process. Both factors make it difficult to obtain instantaneous values from the smart meters in a timely and adequate manner to estimate the real-time state of the system. This problem may be solved in the future with the deployment of metering systems based on other technologies such as 5G. However, PLC technology prevails in many countries, and is not likely to be replaced in the medium term. In the meantime, a solution is needed to provide acceptable real-time state estimates in low voltage networks, not to hinder the active management of these assets in the context of smart grids. In this work, a solution is proposed that allows estimating the state of the low voltage network with a reasonable accuracy considering the low quality of the measurements provided by the deployed infrastructure. The system is validated using a portion of a real pilot network located in the north of Spain fed by a transformer station with seven feeders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate estimates of network parameters are essential for modeling, monitoring, and control in power distribution systems. In this paper, we develop a physics-informed graphical learning algorithm to estimate network parameters of three-phase power distribution systems. Our proposed algorithm uses only readily available smart meter data to estimate the three-phase series resistance and reactance of the primary distribution line segments. We first develop a parametric physics-based model to replace the black-box deep neural networks in the conventional graphical neural network (GNN). Then we derive the gradient of the loss function with respect to the network parameters and use stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to estimate the physical parameters. Prior knowledge of network parameters is also considered to further improve the accuracy of estimation. Comprehensive numerical study results show that our proposed algorithm yields high accuracy and outperforms existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The $P_{st}$ indicator is one of the parameters used in the power quality evaluation. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) flickermeter with a complex signal chain structure is used for $P_{st}$ measurements. The occurrence of $P_{st}$ values greater than the limit value indicates the occurrence of flicker severity caused by voltage fluctuation. This article presents the analysis of the influence of the sampling rate on $P_{st}$ measurement results. For analysis purpose, the analytical model of the IEC flickermeter signal chain has been prepared, considering the sampling rate of input voltage. Based on the prepared model, the possible effects of incorrect sampling rate selection in $P_{st}$ measurements have been presented. The model test results have been compared with laboratory measurement results for two advanced metering infrastructure energy meters with built-in IEC flickermeter. The obtained laboratory measurement results indicate the occurrence of aliasing for tested energy meters, which causes $P_{st}$ measurement disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the evolution of loads and distributed energy resources has added great complexity and uncertainty to distribution networks. In such a context, a reliable characterization of the uncertainty associated with prediction is fundamental to the wide range of the newly emerging applications in the low-voltage level grid. In this regard, this paper proposes a novel method to solve the short-term probabilistic load forecasting (STPLF) problem in distribution networks in which the loads are usually too volatile to be forecasted accurately. The approach developed employs a Dirichlet process mixture model (DPMM) to handle the uncertainty of load patterns, which is inferred by a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based method. Thereafter, the DPMM representation of the load patterns is combined with a tree-based ensemble learning method to address the STPLF by solving a classification problem. The final result is averaged over all MCMC samples. The proposed technique is compared to selected benchmark methods at different aggregation levels using smart meter datasets collected from customers located in Ireland as well as the City of Saskatoon, SK, Canada. The results obtained demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the benchmark methods in STPLF at the given aggregation levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today’s power distribution system is changing to a power-electronics-enabled distribution system, especially with the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs). To monitor and manage those electronic devices and DERs at the grid edge, the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) with two-way communications presents great potential. At present, extensive research explores the upstream communication from smart meters to electric utilities (e.g., meter reading) but few examine the downstream communication from the utilities to smart meters (e.g., meter pinging). This paper discusses the AMI two-way communication and its recent industrial practice in the U.S., especially for applying the smart meter pinging functionality to monitor grid-edge devices and DERs. This paper then develops the two-way communication model and the network calculus method to quantify the impact of the two-way communication on the AMI network. In the end, the proposed method is validated with ns-3 simulation using the modified 13-node test feeder and real-world feeder systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, with the overconsumption of energy, researchers attempt to optimally manage energy consumption and prevent it from being wasted. One beneficial way to manage energy consumption is to integrate the energy grid with information technology, so that data can be exchanged between producers and consumers in a two-way communication network, which is called a smart grid. This data transfer must take place in a secure environment. However, many protocols have been designed to establish a secure channel to transfer data in the smart grid environment, each of which has some disadvantages that still keep the problem open for this field of research. Recently, Kumar et al. proposed a lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). In this article, we show that the proposed protocol does not provide the anonymity of smart meters and is vulnerable to smart meter tracing attack. We also propose a new lightweight ECC-based authenticated key agreement protocol that is resistant against all known attacks including the attack presented in this article. Also, the proposed scheme is more efficient than the recent related scheme. We show that the proposed protocol is semantically secure and also we simulate our protocol using the AVISPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing an electricity theft cyberattack detector for the advanced metering infrastructures (AMIs) is challenging due to the limited availability of electricity theft datasets (i.e., malicious datasets). Anomaly detectors, which are trained solely on honest customers’ energy consumption profiles (i.e., benign datasets), could potentially overcome this challenge. Unfortunately, existing anomaly detectors in AMIs present shallow architectures and are incapable of capturing the temporal correlations as well as the sophisticated patterns present in the electricity consumption data, which impact their detection performance negatively. This article proposes the adoption of deep (stacked) autoencoders with a long-short-term-memory (LSTM)-based sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) structure. The depth of the autoencoders’ structure helps capture the sophisticated patterns of the data and the seq2seq LSTM model enables exploitation of the time-series nature of data. We investigate the performance of simple autoencoder, variational autoencoder, and autoencoder with attention (AEA), in which improved detection performance is observed when seq2seq structures are adopted compared to fully connected ones. Based on the simulation results, the AEA detector offers an enhancement of $4\!-\!21\%$ and $4\!-\!13\%$ in terms of detection rate and false alarm rate, respectively, compared to existing state-of-the-art detectors [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced metering infrastructure targets the real-time collection of massive multisource data with smart meters (SMs), forming a key component of active distribution networks (ADNs). To achieve comprehensive situation awareness for ADNs, the use of high-speed and reliable two-way communications, such as 5G communications, is the basis. However, it is challenging to optimally allocate wireless resources for massive data, especially when emergency events occur randomly. This study discusses an energy-efficient and optimal wireless resource allocation method employing 5G uplink-based machine-type communications for achieving ADN situation awareness. We propose a 5G-based framework that can reasonably reserve resource blocks for emergency data and model the resource allocation scheme as a problem of maximizing energy efficiency (EE). Then, by using the sample average approximation theory, we transform the stochastic constraint and summarize the scheme as a mixed-integer linear programming problem. Finally, we construct an iterative algorithm based on the Lagrange dual algorithm for searching the global optimal allocation scheme. The results of simulations and experiments illustrate that even if emergency events occur randomly, our algorithm can optimally support the cooperative transmission of all sampled data while providing the best EE for large-scale SM communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost-friendly differential privacy (CDP) of smart meters can be preserved by an appropriate charging and discharging mechanism that uses rechargeable batteries (RBs) to generate Laplace distributed random noise. However, the existing CDP methods have several issues. First, the maximum discharge rate of an RB requires to vary with the maximal consumption of houses. Second, the probability of an RB to charge/discharge depends on the demand, regardless of the state-of-charge (SoC) of an RB. Third, in extreme SoC (near-empty or almost fully charged) of an RB, no noise added to the demand. To overcome these, we propose a mechanism in which a novel probability density function is designed to generate near Laplace distributed random noise. We also utilize a renewable energy source with small storage in cascade with an RB to enhance performance. Both theoretical analysis and simulations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring the operating conditions of residential appliances by collecting the total power consumption data of households has a great significance for smart power utilization. In this study, a graph least squares reconstruction approach is proposed. First, the graph signal is constructed using the collected active power consumption data, providing unique appliance signature information. The signal smoothness of the graph and an iterative least squares reconstruction algorithm are utilized for classification. The proposed graph reconstruction method relies on only low-sampling data from installed smart meters. It aims to address some existing problems of event-based NILM methods like measurement noise, indistinguishable load signatures, and inaccurate power reconstruction. Also, extensive training and associated calculations are not required. Simulation results on the REDD benchmark dataset demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms some of the current state-of-the-art techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-phase unbalance could have significant impacts on the secure and economic operation of a low-voltage distribution system. With the deployment of smart meters and the emergence of phase switch devices (PSDs), more efficient schemes for mitigating three-phase unbalance are expected by utilizing numerous measurement data and the installed PSDs in low-voltage areas. Therefore, a bi-level optimal phase switch device placement model for mitigating three-phase unbalance is proposed in this work. In the upper-level model, the PSD placement strategy is optimized by minimizing the total costs of PSD installation and operation costs of low-voltage areas determined in the lower-level model. In the lower-level model, the operation costs of low-voltage areas for typical days are minimized based on the PSDs and their locations determined in the upper-level model. The proposed bi-level model is tested by an actual low-voltage area of Zhejiang province, China, and the effectiveness of the optimal PSD placement model for reducing the total investment and operation costs of the low-voltage area demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid advancements in smart grid (SG) technology extend a large number of applications including vehicle charging, smart buildings, and smart cities through the efficient use of advanced communication architecture. However, the underlying public channel leads these services to be vulnerable to many threats. Recently, some security schemes were proposed to counter these threats. However, the insecurities of some of these schemes against key compromise impersonation (KCI) and related attacks or compromise on efficiency calls for a secure and efficient authentication scheme for SG infrastructure. A new scheme to secure SG communication is presented in this article to provide a direct device-to-device authentication among smart meter and neighborhood area network gateway. Designed specifically to resists KCI and related attacks, the proposed scheme is more secure and completes the authentication procedure by using the least communication cost as compared with related schemes, which is evident through security and efficiency comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the existing research focuses on electricity theft cyberattacks in the consumption domain. On the contrary, a high penetration level of distributed generators (DGs) may result in increased electricity theft cyberattacks in the distributed generation domain, which is the focus of this article. In these attacks, malicious customers can hack into the smart meters monitoring their DG units, which are usually photovoltaic, and manipulate their readings to report higher injected energy to the grid and claim more profit under feed-in tariff programs. This article proposes a data-driven approach based on machine learning to detect such thefts. We adopt an anomaly detection approach where a theft detection unit (TDU) based on a regression tree model is designed to detect suspicious data. Historical records of solar irradiance, temperature, and smart meter readings are utilized in the training stage of the detector. The probability density function of the error between the actual readings from DG meters and the predicted generation by the regression model is utilized as a metric to detect suspicious data. Several theft scenarios are used to assess the performance of the TDU. Furthermore, a comparison study with other detectors is presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed TDU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge of distribution grid models, including topologies and line impedances, is essential for grid monitoring, control and protection. However, such information is often unavailable, incomplete or outdated. The increasing deployment of smart meters (SMs) provides a unique opportunity to tackle this issue. This paper proposes a two-stage framework for distribution grid modeling using SM data. In the first stage, the network topology is identified by reconstructing a weighted Laplacian matrix of distribution networks. In the second stage, a least absolute deviations (LAD) regression model is developed for estimating line impedance of a single branch based on the nonlinear (inverse) power flow model, wherein a conductor library is leveraged to narrow down the solution space. The LAD regression model is originally a mixed-integer nonlinear program whose continuous relaxation is still non-convex. Thus, we specially address its convex relaxation and discuss the exactness. The modified regression model is then embedded within a bottom-up sweep algorithm to achieve the identification across the network in a branch-wise manner. Numerical results on the IEEE 13-bus, 37-bus and 69-bus test feeders validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solutions recommended by international roadmaps and technical reports on smart metering refer to interval metering with time resolutions higher than 15 min to 1 h as traditionally used. Based on the characteristics of the users’ power patterns in distribution networks, this article shows that in practical cases the resolutions of the traditional metering are not sufficient to assess peak power and network losses effectively. Effective interval metering solutions should have resolutions of one minute or less. Moreover, this article shows the advantages of assessing the average power peak (amplitude and duration) and estimating the network losses through innovative solutions beyond interval metering, based on event-driven energy metering. The use of EDM significantly enhances the quality of pattern representation and reduces the amount of data required with respect to high-resolution interval metering. Based on the Pareto analysis of conflicting objectives, a novel procedure to set up the EDM thresholds is presented. The applications shown use real data and refer to a single user, some users connected to a distribution network feeder, and many users connected to a large distribution system. The EDM benefits are quantified using specific indicators that consider energy losses and peak power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impedance based fault location schemes using substation measurements are becoming absolute due to the introduction of distributed generation and islanding-mode operating capability of distribution system (DS). In this article, a new fault location algorithm is presented for active distribution systems using microphasor measurement units (μPMU) and smart meter (SM) data. The line current data obtained from the μPMUs in the DS are exploited to divide the system into different zones. To identify the faulted zone, a fault zone identification parameter is devised based on the pre and during fault positive sequence current injection data recorded in the μPMUs. Next, fault location analysis is limited to the identified zone to reduce the computational complexity. To locate the fault within the identified zone, the work proposes two parameters for the identification of bus nearest to fault (BNF) and faulted line section connected to the identified bus. The scheme does not require the information about the type of ground faults and is applicable to balanced, unbalanced, grid connected and as well as islanded distribution systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technological upgrade of power utilities to smart metering is a process that can take several years. Meanwhile, smart meters coexist with previous generations of digital and electromechanical power meters. While the smart meters provide high-resolution power measurements, electromechanical meters are typically read by an operator once a month. The coexistence of these two technologies poses the challenge of monitoring non-technical losses (NTL) and fraud where some customers’ consumption is sampled every 15 minutes, while others are sampled once a month. In addition, since companies already have years of monthly historical consumption, it is natural to reflect how the past data can be leveraged to predict and improve NTL on smart grids. This work addresses both problems by proposing a multi-resolution deep learning architecture capable of simultaneously training and predicting input consumption curves sampled 1 a month or every 15 minutes. The proposed algorithms are tested on an extensive data set of users with and without fraudulent behaviors collected from the Uruguayan utility company UTE and on a public access data set with synthetic fraud. Results show that the multi-resolution architecture performs better than algorithms trained for a specific type of meters (i.e., for a particular resolution). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide popularity of smart meters enables the collection of massive amounts of fine-grained electricity consumption data. Extracting typical electricity consumption patterns from these data supports the retailers in their understanding of consumer behaviors. In this way, diversified services such as personalized price design and demand response targeting can be provided. Various clustering algorithms have been studied for electricity consumption pattern extraction. These methods have to be implemented in a centralized way, assuming that all smart meter data can be accessed. However, smart meter data may belong to different retailers or even consumers themselves who are not willing to share their data. In order to better protect the privacy of the smart meter data owners, this paper proposes two federated learning approaches for electricity consumption pattern extraction, where the k-means clustering algorithm can be trained in a distributed way based on two frequently used strategies, namely model-averaging and gradient-sharing. Numerical experiments on two real-world smart meter datasets are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hassle-free in-house charging of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) is getting popular. Due to high power consumption, in-house PEV charging has a significant impact on the distribution network, and the utility companies are facing challenges in balancing the power demand. The problem could be solved by increasing distribution network capacity, designing an effective demand response program aimed at PEV charging, implementing vehicle to grid (V2G) or vehicle to house (V2H), and so on. One of the fundamental parameters for the mentioned solutions is to identify households with PEVs. Multi-level charging, power consumption similar to other home appliances, and absence of submeter for charging outlets make identification difficult. In this paper, a new feature extraction technique called knowledge-based systematic feature extraction is proposed to identify households with PEVs. The extracted features are easily interpretable and validated using two datasets from different regions. Keeping real scenarios in mind, the study examines scenario-based results and finds that the accuracy using extracted features ranges from 80.20% to 100% depending on classifier, number of vehicles, and level of charging. Moreover, results show improved performance compared to existing methods for identifying households with PEVs and other state-of-the-art feature extraction techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential occupancy patterns are closely tied with consumers’ activities and can potentially be leveraged to improve demand response by identifying the periods when high demand occurs. Occupancy detection can be generally divided into two categories in existing studies: intrusive and non-intrusive detection. However, both methods are still challenging to implement in practice, due to privacy concerns raised by intrusive sensors and the lack of labeled data required by non-intrusive methods. This paper seeks to design customized prices based on different consumers’ occupancy status and consumption patterns to enhance both retailer and consumers’ benefits using smart meter data. The interaction between the retailer and consumers is modeled as a one-leader-N-follower Stackelberg game. A two-stage decision-making framework, including day-ahead and real-time, is proposed for revenue maximization. The ECO (Electricity Consumption and Occupancy) Swiss households dataset is adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed occupancy-informed demand response program design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next generation massive access has attracted considerable recent attention due to its potential in smart meters, industrial internet of things (IIoT), and smart traffics, etc. However, how to achieve the minimum queuing delay in massive access still remains open, thereby making quality-of-service (QoS) assurance a challenging issue in practice. In this paper, we aim at minimizing the average queuing delay by applying cross-layer scheduling with joint channel and buffer awareness, the complexity of which increases exponentially with the number of users. Fortunately, with massive users or devices, mean-field approximation can be adopted to substantially simplify the design and analysis of the delay-optimal scheduling. More specifically, we present a cocktail filling policy and a queue-aware multiuser diversity protocol, in which all backlogged packets of a user will be served by either NOMA or TDMA mode respectively, if the user’s channel gain is beyond a certain threshold. The average queuing delay and queue-length-violation probability are derived based on a Markov model. Numerical results will also demonstrate that the mean-field approximation based joint physical and network layer scheduling is capable of improving the QoS in massive access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the progressive advancement of the smart grid paradigm, electricity systems worldwide are deploying advanced metering technologies in residential sectors. Smart meters can monitor and process the electricity use of households at very high sampling rates. The availability of hundreds of thousands of time-series load profiles opens the possibility of applying clustering methods for grouping consumers with similar consumption patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart homes present numerous potential advantages for home occupants and utilities, including benefits such as energy savings, user convenience, and detailed data collection. Realizing any of these benefits requires a level of home instrumentation, such as the deployment of sensors or upgraded devices within the home. However, due to the expense and overhead of installing such equipment, instrumentation happens slowly and gradually, leading to many homes that are not particularly "smart," yet should still function as part of the emerging smart grid. As a result, real-world smart home applications, particularly those that operate across many homes, will need to be realized in homes with modest and nonstandardized smart home capabilities. As a case study, we consider the problem of monitoring the energy use of specific devices across many homes without smart home capabilities and describe a prototype system to tackle this problem. Considering such systems may broaden our notions of what constitutes a "smart home" at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various smart meter data aggregation protocols have been developed in the literature to address the rising privacy threats against customers' energy consumption data. However, most of these protocols require a smart meter (installed at the consumer's end) to either maintain a secret key or to run an authenticated key establishment scheme for interacting with the aggregator. Both of these approaches create additional requirements for the system. To address this issue, this article first proposes a machine-learning-based ultra-light-weight data aggregation scheme for smart grids that does not require a secret key to be maintained for communicating with the aggregator. In particular, unlike existing data aggregation schemes, in the proposed data aggregation scheme, neither the server nor the smart meter needs to store any secret. Instead, for every round of data aggregation, each smart meter uses an embedded PUF for generating a unique random response for a given challenge. On the other hand, the server maintains a PUF model for each smart meter for producing the same random response. This unique secret key is used to ensure the privacy of the metering data. Next, we propose an optimized data aggregation scheme using collaborative learning to enhance the performance of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of residential customers have installed hybrid rooftop solar battery systems (HRSBSs). Currently, most HRSBSs are installed behind-the-meter (BTM), where only customers’ net load is measured by smart meters. This invisibility poses significant challenges to the system operation. Disaggregating BTM PV generation and battery charging/discharging profile of customers can enhance the grid-edge observability. This article proposes an energy disaggregation method to jointly separate the PV generation and battery charging/discharging power from the net load. First, a Home Smart Battery Management model is built to simulate the battery charging/discharging profile. Second, an optimal disaggregation model is established based on a contextually supervised source separation method. Furthermore, the feature vectors of PV, load, and battery are extracted as the input of the disaggregation model. Case studies on two datasets from Australia and China show that the proposed method has a promising disaggregation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a two-layer in-depth secured management architecture for the optimal operation of energy internet in hybrid microgrids. In the cyber layer of the proposed architecture, a two-level intrusion detection system (IDS) is proposed to detect various cyber-attacks (i.e., Sybil attacks, spoofing attacks, false data injection attacks) on wireless-based advanced metering infrastructures. The sequential probability ratio testing approach is utilized in both levels of the proposed IDS to detect cyber-attacks based on a sequence of anomalies rather than only one piece of evidence. The process of making a decision in the proposed IDS is a random walk that starts from a point between two thresholds and moves toward one of them concerning received data samples. The feasibility and performance of the proposed architecture are examined on the IEEE 33-bus test system and the results are provided for both islanded and grid-connected operation modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Battery energy storage (BES) and demand response (DR) are two important resources to increase the operational flexibility of a virtual power plant (VPP) and thus reduce the economic risks that VPP faces in the short-term electricity market. This article develops a data-driven approach for VPP resource planning (VRP), in which BES sizing and DR customer selection are optimized synergistically to maximize VPP's profit in the electricity market. Heterogeneity in DR potential across individual customers is considered in the planning framework by utilizing the knowledge learnt from smart meter data. The overall VRP problem is formulated by a risk-managed, multistage stochastic programming framework to address the uncertainties from the intermittent renewable energy sources, load demands, market prices, and DR resources. Case studies compare the VRP results under two market imbalance settlement settings, namely, penalty-charged and penalty-free markets. The results demonstrate that jointly optimizing BES and DR customer selection leveraging the smart meter data can improve the VPP's expected profit under both market settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, legacy electrical distribution systems are migrating to a new modern electric grid with the capability of supporting different applications such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), distributed energy resources, and electric vehicles. Among these applications, AMI is playing an important role in delivering data from customers to power utilities, supporting reliable real-time monitoring, and remote operation of power quality data and voltage profile. The AMI consists of smart meters, data aggregation points (DAPs), the utility control center, and communication networks. Appropriate network planning plays an essential role in facilitating the exchange of data between consumers and power utilities as well as accommodating new smart grid applications and future growth. This work proposes an optimal placement of DAPs for AMI based on machine learning clustering techniques in residential grids. Network partitioning is introduced to create sub-networks and graph algorithms generate a deployment topology given optimization constraints. A new measurement metric called coverage density is considered to indicate neighborhood area networks (NAN) zones with the appropriate coverage. Three real scenarios of NAN are considered: urban, suburban, and rural. The proposed algorithm is evaluated and compared with conventional heuristic optimization methods with respect to average and maximum distance between smart meters and DAPs, coverage density, and execution time.

The task of determining the phase connection of customers, known as phase identification, is crucial to obtain accurate distribution system models. This paper starts with a thorough literature review of the existing phase identification methods, which are broadly divided into three categories: hardware-based, real power-based, and voltage-based methods. This is followed by multiple case studies assessing the accuracy of six real power- and voltage-based phase identification algorithms on four realistic distribution test systems. Synthetic load profiles along with network models are used to quantify accuracy of each method for different scenarios: varying advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) coverage, number of initially mislabeled customer phases, number of available samples, and measurement noise. A case study using a real AMI data set, including field verification, is also provided. Finally, several aspects key to accurate phase identification are discussed in detail.

This paper investigates the effect of data integrity attacks on the central control of the microgrids (MGs), which can lead to severe blackouts and load shedding. It assesses this cyber attack from the steady state and optimal scheduling point of view. In order to stop the cyber hacking, a new deep learning-based framework has been developed based on the generative adversarial networks (GANs). In this framework, two networks compete with each other, wherein the first network generates fake data, and the second one is responsible for the data classification. In order to get into the most optimal features, a new optimization method based on a modified teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO) algorithm is also devised to reinforce the GAN model and help a better matching training process. In addition, a new modification is introduced for TLBO to avoid premature convergence and provide high population diversity. To show the effectiveness of the proposed framework, a real dataset of several smart metering devices in a MG has been tested. Results illustrate the high performance of the proposed framework, comparing to the well-known conventional detection frameworks with hit rate of 93.11%, miss rate of 6.89%, false alarm rate of 7.76% and correct reject rate of 92.24%.

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are opening new opportunities and services for different smart grid applications such as advanced meter infrastructures (AMI), distributed energy resources, and electric vehicles. Among these applications, AMIs represent the first step toward future smart grid implementation by enabling the reading and recording of electric power consumption on request or a schedule. In this study, the main focus is designing an IoT-based architecture to support AMIs’ daily reporting and billing in a residential grid. First, the network modeling for AMI is discussed. Long range (LoRa) technology, as one of the promising candidates for long range low power wide area networks (LPWANs), has been studied and discussed. A comprehensive analysis of the LoRa-based architecture is given for a case study of an actual residential grid, Puerto Montt, Chile. The results are analyzed and discussed for packet delivery ratio, energy consumption, throughput, number of collisions, and frequency distribution.

With the widespread adoption of smart meters in buildings, an unprecedented amount of high-resolution energy data is released, which provides opportunities to understand building consumption patterns. Accordingly, research efforts have employed data analytics and machine learning methods to segment customers based on their load profiles, which help utilities and energy providers promote customized/personalized targeting for energy programs. Existing energy consumption segmentation techniques use assumptions that could reduce clusters’ quality in representing their members. Therefore, in this paper, we investigated a two-stage clustering method for capturing more representative load shape temporal patterns and peak demands through a cluster merging approach. In the first stage, load shapes are clustered (using classical clustering algorithms) by allowing a large number of clusters to accurately capture variations in energy use patterns, and cluster centroids are extracted by accounting for limited shape misalignment within the range of Demand Response (DR) timeframes. In the second stage, clusters with similar centroids and power magnitude ranges are merged using Complexity-Invariant Dynamic Time Warping. We used three datasets consisting of ~250 households (~15000 profiles) to demonstrate the efficacy of the framework, compared to baseline methods, and discuss the impact on energy management. The proposed investigated merging-based clustering also increased correlation between cluster centroids and the corresponding members by 3–9% for different datasets.

Improving the reliability of energy distribution systems is a major concern to multiple parties as they are not only critical infrastructure themselves, but also affect other connected infrastructure. Smart Grids have been proposed to leverage the advantages of Internet of Things (IoT) to allow smarter management and faster recovery of energy distribution systems against disruptions. However, Smart Grid applications require a reliable, lightweight and fast authentication system to realize their potential in a secure manner. In this work, we propose a Strong PUF (physically unclonable function) system that can meet the stringent resource and performance constraints imposed by a Smart Grid operational environment. Our results indicate that the proposed mechanism produces a Strong PUF with close to ideal normalized uniqueness of 50 % and an accuracy of 50 % to modeling attacks using the best known machine learning algorithms. Additionally, our scheme has a low hardware overhead cost of $750~ \mu m^{2}$ in 45 nm technology and a sub-1 ms key generation time, ensuring the entire system is fast and lightweight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]