Calibration services in support of smart grid applications

Deregulation of the electricity market in North America has resulted in many new challenges for electrical utilities, their regulators and the national laboratories that provide calibration and traceability for their equipment. The deregulated marketplace now allows small distributed generation installations often connected in rural distribution networks where power quality is more likely to be an issue. It is therefore important to know what impact the increased level of harmonics will have on measuring equipment, particularly equipment used in revenue billing applications and for the safe operation and control of the new "smarter" power grid. This paper discusses some of the research and development initiatives undertaken at the National Research Council of Canada to address the changing test and calibration requirements of the electrical power industry.