Using Smart Meter measurements to manage accuracy of current calculations in LV feeders

Abstract

Knowledge of currents in individual Low Voltage feeders of a secondary substation is interesting for distribution system operators for a variety of purposes. Deploying measurement devices at each feeder in each substation, however, can be costly. Due to the increasing deployment of Smart Meters, the knowledge about currents at each connected customer is in principle available. This paper proposes and evaluates an approach to determine the feeder currents taking into account the impact of measurement errors of Smart Meter measurements. The developed approach makes a rigorous derivation of confidence intervals for the calculated voltage and current values utilizing a subset of measured voltages and currents as input. The approach is applied to two realistic low voltage grids and the impact of measurement errors and missing smart meter measurements is quantitatively analyzed.