Dynamic prediction capabilities of Smart Metering Infrastructure

After the development of MicroGrids (MGs), their Smart Metering Infrastructure (SMI) undergoes constant enhancements [1–8]. There are two key objectives of these enhancements: the intelligent sensors for obtaining energy management data for the service provider (SP) and implemented communication technology in SMI for transmission of these data [2–4, 9]. Most of the designed sensors are used for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) [2, 9, 10]. Such stored data for a long term allows the SP to predict the demand of certain users for energy consumption based on statistical approach. Hence, the accuracy of this approach would completely rely on the statistics. However, higher accuracy in power management can be achieved by dynamic prediction approach. Dynamic prediction provides a real-time energy usage information at a finer granularity level. Such prediction would improve the accuracy of energy consumption forecasting making MGs more efficient. At the same time, the deployed telecommunication network for SMI should meet the requirements for continuous transmission of such real-time energy usage information. The implementation of SMI with sensors for dynamic energy consumption prediction is considered in this paper. The envisaged design of a communication network for this SMI is presented. Various modifications of this network suitable for different scenarios are also given. The future work will include verification by simulations and lab test-bed implementations.