Page 36 - Energize January 2021

TECHNICAL

Features and capabilities
Table 1: Benefits (facilities) available with AMI smart grid
Consumer and network load and
Activity Uses usage profiles
Load profiles are used for planning and
Monitoring and managing operating conditions • Improved power quality general monitoring of the state of the
• Validation of voltage compliance network and give a picture of how the
• CVR and Volt/Var optimisation
network is loaded under various
Customer and network load profiling • Capacity planning conditions. To achieve this, the time-
• Load forecasting and growth projection based load figures from all customers
• Transformer load management can be grouped together in various
• Phase load balancing
• Demand response management combinations to provide daily, weekly,
monthly and season load variations.
Outage management • Verifying outages through meter pings Load profiling can also give information
• Identifying outage locations on the effect of DERs and EV chargers
• Automated outage reporting
on the network.
AMI provides a flexible way of
DER management • Identifying unregistered customer owned systems
• Determining DER capacity aggregating load profiles for various
• Monitoring impact of DER systems configurations over different groupings of
customers. In addition to having profiles
Measuring and verification • Revenue protection ( theft and illegal connections) that better represent the diversity of its
• Reliability metrics
• Load shifting and demand response customer population, AMI enables a more
• New rate options(time of use and prepay) detailed and accurate profile. Load
profiles based on hourly reading (8760
Identifying unsafe working conditions • Identify unregistered PV installations data points) are now possible.
• Identify downed conductors
Without AMI data, load shapes are
static. However, because load varies over
The captured data can be further aggregated and processed to provide the following time, a dynamic load profile is required.
consumer and grid information. With a changing generation mix and new
• Consumer load profiles alternatives for meeting load growth,
• Distribution transformer and feeder load profiles. specific load shapes rather than the
• Network voltage profiles and anomalies generalised shapes for different customer
• Transformer and feeder performance, fault and failure information classes are needed.
• Theft and illegal connection detection Where DERs are involved, AMI gives
• Irregularities and abnormalities the ability to produce forecasts needed
• Changes due to DER systems connected to the grid. using hourly profiles for each circuit,

Figure 1: A typical AMI system structure

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