31-05-2012, 04:57 PM
Electricity Smart Meters Interfacing the Households
Electricity Smart Meters Interfacing the Households.pdf (Size: 429.2 KB / Downloads: 136)
INTRODUCTION
THE electronic meters for electricity (smart meters) are
undergoing an increasing deployment in private homes
all over the world, which is mostly triggered from the government
decisions in order to fulfill energy-saving targets. As a
consequence, an ever growing physical communication network,
made up of millions of local meters, has been established,
whose considerable advantages are so far in favor primarily, if
not solely, of the energy distributors, since they are enabled
at simplified, more efficient, and less costly transactions with
the customers, e.g., for meter reading, billing, and energy
supply administration [1]. By its nature, however, a digital
communication network has, among its features, the flexibility
and extensibility of the structure, so that new applications can
also be provided.
ROLE OF SMART METERS IN THE INTEGRATED ENERGY SYSTEM
For several years, internationally, the concept of intelligent
interconnection among energy networks, known as smart grid,
has been assessed. On a different perspective, the final user of
the same energy, within the house environment, is nowadays
at the center of a quite extended communication network, including
telephone, data transmission, home automation, and the
most pervasive of all, the Web. Thus, the two worlds (the utility’s
and the house’s) are closely related but still differentiated
with respect to many parameters (protocols and physical media)
so that such important information as that related to energy
consumption cannot be easily interchanged.
SMART METER DEPLOYMENT. INTERNATIONAL OVERVIEW
In an international overview of smart metering deployment,
a variety of proposals and a differentiated level of implementation
in a number of nations have to be highlighted. In the
following, the more relevant results either for extension or
technical aspects will be discussed.
United States and Canada. The requirement for DR policy
and smart meter deployment was first raised in California in the
last years of utility crisis and is now further stimulated from the
$4.5 billion federal economic package, allocated for research
related to smart grids. In the development of the DR potential
scenarios that rely on dynamic pricing, the Fourth Assessment
of Demand Response and Advanced Metering issued by a
federal commission [7] estimates 7.95 million advanced meters
installed nationwide in 2009. A potential at five and ten years
is then estimated under different scenarios.
Wireless Connection Between the Meter and the House
This solution is, in principle, very close to the previous one,
where the dedicated physical line is substituted by a wireless
link. This involves the implementation of a wireless network
by providing nodes both on the meter and on the connected
device within the home, all of them requiring possible protocol
adaptation.
The reference standard for such transmission in this context
is IEEE 802.15.4, which defines the first two lower levels
ISO/OSI (physical and access). The implementation of
higher levels of application could be, e.g., the well-known and
widespread ZigBee standard which is endowed with specifications
well fitted to this application, like very low battery
consumption due to the sleeping mechanism and also provides
specific profiles for both the home automation and energy
measurement [21]; however, other protocol solutions are not
excluded. End users or service providers, at the house location,
can use information directly as long as the same protocol is
employed for meter data transmission and home automation
services.
CONCLUSION
The communication between electricity smart meters and
households offers a number of opportunities to the privates
and the community in a world urging for solutions intended at
energy saving. This paper has shown that a number of available
and technically sound solutions are at hand and make it possible
the implementation of a local interface offering to the end user
added services related to energy saving and home automation.
The solutions proposed and discussed here are based on open
interfaces and different physical media (twisted pair, wireless
communication, powerline, and Web); the features, advantages
and problems of each of them have been stressed.