Performance analysis of smart metering for smart grid: An overview

Smart metering systems generally referred to as the next-generation power measurement system, is considered as a revolutionary and evolutionary regime of existing power grids. More importantly, with integration of advanced computing and communication technologies, the smart meter (SM) is expected to greatly enhance efficiency and reliability of future power systems with renewable energy resources, as well as distributed intelligence and demand response. Different electrical energy metering standards are point of concern for power/energy measurements. As measurement standards are formed, systems built around them can become interoperable from a standards point of view but still have incompatible configurations or different maturity levels, or include non-standardized functions. Even in areas that are standardized, there are sometimes implementation decisions that can result in different measurement and security behavior. With this paper we make three contributions: firstly, we identify various 1-channel and 3-channel metrology integrated circuits (ICs), which are mandatory for the standard measurement of distributed and renewable electricity generation. Secondly, we describe harmonics effect on metrology, which impacts on reliability of widespread smart metering infrastructure. Finally, we develop and describe a comprehensive set of security issues for SMs. Specifically, we focus on reviewing and discussing smart metrology meter (SMM) applications (i.e. metrological functions and real-time monitoring functions), security requirements, network vulnerabilities, attack countermeasures, secure communication protocols required in smart grid (SG) architectures. This review will enable the researchers, public policy makers and stakeholders to open the mind to explore possible in an evolving energy domain as well as beyond this area.