Smart Metering Systems

Blockchain technology is one of the most vital and exciting technologies available today. It can transform the business world and the organizations' functions. It offers several possibilities to flourish existing businesses, grow entirely new ones, and severely disrupt traditional organizations. This chapter aims to study the applications of blockchain in procurement, to improve at the same time effectiveness and sustainability, and to define its critical success factors. The chapter presents a model and then describes its application in a real business case. It highlights the critical challenges in this blockchain implementation and the potentials of blockchain in managing sustainable procurement in support of utilities. This blockchain application is for smart metering. The blockchain solution contributes to the three bottom lines: economic, social, and sustainable. It can help support sustainable procurement, reduce errors, improve organizational functions and procedures, and prevent fraud. The chapter includes some challenges and their possible remediations.

Smart Metering and Pricing Policy in Smart Grids

Pricing policy is one of the tools allowing the involvement of customers in the balance between the supply and the demand in smart grids. The present chapter aims at presenting the smart metering action including the bidirectional measurement of energy for smart houses equipped with renewable energies as well as the way a smart meter communicates data at the required timing to and from the control center. A typical bill establishment explaining how the net billing is produced along with a discussion about different pricing policies that the utility may adopt to reduce the peak load demand is also presented. The work is concluded by a typical simulation of a smart city modeled in LABVIEW software.

Real-Time Monitoring of Smart Meters Based on Blockchain Technology

In this chapter, the authors primarily discuss how blockchain is being utilized in smarter grids across the globe and how some use cases can be a good fit as a technology. They ensure the reliability and uninterrupted power supply to end users by using smart metering in micro and macro grids, which is possible with novel technology that is transparent and without any cyberattacks/hackers: blockchain technology (BCT). In this chapter, BCT is implemented significantly at micro/macro smart grid network. Such a network would give efficient improvement and be interesting.

Pass/Fail Quality Assessment in Last Mile Smart Metering Networks Based on PRIME Interface

The pass/fail form is one of the presentation methods of quality assessment results. The authors, as part of a research team, participated in the process of creating the PRIME interface analyzer. The PRIME interface is a standardized interface—considered as communication technology for smart metering wired networks, which are specific kinds of sensor networks. The frame error ratio (FER) assessment and its presentation in the pass/fail form was one of the problems that needed to be solves in the PRIME analyzer project. In this paper, the authors present their method of a unified FER assessment, which was implemented in the PRIME analyzer, as one of its many functionalities. The need for FER unification is the result of using different modulation types and an optional forward error correction mechanism in the PRIME interface. Having one unified FER and a threshold value makes it possible to present measurement results in the pass/fail form. For FER unification, the characteristics of FER vs. signal-to-noise ratio, for all modulations implemented in PRIME, were used in the proposed algorithm (and some are presented in this paper). In communication systems, the FER value is used to forecast the quality of a link or service, but using PLC technology, forecasting is highly uncertain due to the main noise. The presentation of the measurement results in the pass/fail form is important because it allows unskilled staff to make many laborious measurements in last mile smart metering networks.

Aggregated Technical Commercial and Collection Loss Mitigation Through a Smart Metering Application Strategy

The privatization exercise that led to the creation of 11 distribution companies (Discos) is yet to yield the result of meeting the electricity supply needs of Nigeria. It is in realization of this fact that the Federal Government of Nigeria recently made different proposals and regulations to increase efficiency, availability, and competitiveness within the power industry. This article establishes a technical gain ratio to measure the impact of scaling up smart metering on the aggregated technical commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses. The ATC&C loss is the difference between the amount of electricity received by a distribution company from the transmission company and the amount of electricity for which it invoices its customers plus the adjusted collections loss. To achieve this objective, reviews of historical data of the Discos ATC&C losses and customers’ metering records as published by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020 were carried out. In addition, efforts were made to mathematically model the relationship between % metering and % ATC&C losses as this was the framework to help carry out effective forecasts and analyses of the study in order to show the impact level of the strategy employed. One of the salient technical contributions of this article was that it established that for every 1% increase in metering installation, there is a proportionate 0.8% decrease in ATC&C losses, provided all other factors responsible for technical and commercial losses remain constant. Consequently, improved ATC&C loss reduction would be achieved if Discos adopt a combination of other strategies that would ensure reduction in technical and commercial losses in addition to aggressive deployment of meter assets. However, in practice, factors causing technical and commercial losses are never constant as system components depreciate/burn out with time, energy theft, and pilferage, and meter tamper/bypass is on the increase daily; meter deployment is not aggressive enough to match utility customers’ growth. Hence, the adoption of combined modern strategies in addition to aggressive metering in tandem with customers’ growth has to be employed by Discos in a deliberate attempt to reduce ATC&C losses.

Smart Metering and Scheduling of Electrical Loads of Buildings

The article analyzes global trends in the development of smart metering and energy planning in buildings, the development and implementation of intelligent energy monitoring to collect and analyze data on energy consumption for management to improve energy efficiency, it considers the implementation of infrastructure for advanced smart metering smart home using NILM-technology non-intrusive load monitoring. It is shown that equipping buildings of various purposes in a smart city with real-time energy accounting systems with smart meters generates a new approach to improving the energy efficiency of buildings and contributes to the successful implementation of energy service contracts and energy management systems in them.