Smart meters and demand response: A double challenge

The evolution of energy demand and production can be faced with a Grid that becomes Smart: a network that is capable of integrating heterogeneous players in both generation and demand, allowing each of them to access electricity market and being able to react in real-time and autonomously to changing conditions on the grid. Such paradigm may allow to provide advanced services (i.e. Demand Response) increasing network efficiency and reliability. Necessary requisite for the implementation of a Smart Grid is having a metering architecture that can provide timely and reliable information regarding the state of the grid. The paper addresses the topic of an Advaced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), focusing on the first block, the Smart Meter. A meter prototype for the electric energy measurement, based on ARM architecture, is presented; the technical solutions, both in hardware and software, are described in detail; finally the results of tests carried out for its metrological characterization are reported.