SMART ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Project Title

Project Area of Specialization

Internet of Things

Project Summary

Electricity demands of Pakistan is increasing day by day with energy losses exceeding 18%. Present electric distribution system does not allow reliable provision of energy. To overcome the shortage of supply and the load management, Pakistan has allowed consumers to produce electricity through renewable sources for their personal use and can also resell it to power companies by providing it to national grid. It requires up gradation in electric wiring in a home, electric consumer meters, electric transmission system, etc. This system allows monitoring of electric energy consumed and generated by every household thus creating a consumer profile. This profile will help in designing decision support systems for reliable electric provision. This option has been used in western world since long and various international standards are been developed to acquire it. This project intends to design, develop and implement a scalable model for smart electric distribution system (SEDS).

In SEDS, a smart electric meter will be explored preferably with open hardware and software architecture. Communication interface will be developed with this meter and open source communication protocol will be implemented from meter to Mid-Box attached with respective transformer. This Mid-Box will be designed and developed based on microcontrollers and high energy PLCs/SCADA systems. This box will be further equipped with communication interface to provide real time data to power companies. A web portal will be designed to receive all data and perform statistical analysis of a particular consumer during the peak and off peak hours so that the distributers can analyze the trend of consumption and the capacity of reverse feed from the consumer to the main feeder and subsequently assists the distributors to regulate the power supply according to the trend of the usage of electricity. A quest will be made to design entire system as scale down version of bigger system. During this project, we intend to seek help from Karachi Electric and various technology companies, already been short listed by Government of Pakistan to undertake this task.

Project Objectives

Our Project plan is focused on understanding, developing and simulation of consumption / generation data through a smart metering system over network, and modeling the power grid. User and system behaviors plus developing control and communication strategies for achieving the smart distribution vision for a more efficient and dynamic electric grid.

Objective 1:

Understanding of consumer electric meters with focus to reverse meters.

For implementing this objective, we have to study electricity delivery infrastructure along with components and communication protocols for electric meters, AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), DMS (Distributed Management System), DER (Distributed Energy Resource), ADA (Advanced Distributed Automation), GIS (Geographic Information System), CIS (Consumer Information System), etc. Devices that are used to support these systems consist of RTU (Remote Terminal Units), PLC (Power Line Communication) modems, smart meters, data concentrators and so on.

Objective 2:

Implementation of open source communication protocols between meters and smart grid.

For successful implementation of smart grid, we have to study, understand and follow IEEE standards of smart grid 1547 series for transportation, 1675, 1775, 1901, 1901.2, and 2030 for home devices. Advance metering standards 1377, 1701, 1703, 3001.8, p1704, and p1705. For dedicated smart grid design standards 1547 series.

Objective 3:

Design and Development of mid way box between Transformer and home consumers to monitor electric losses.

As a proof of concept we shall be developing a Mid way box prototype capable of communicating and monitoring between consumer energy meter, transformer and the distributer over Wi-Fi/ GSM/ DSL using standard communication protocol and so to regulate the amount of power to a particular consumer accordingly to its needs and to develop a server based application that will be communicated directly with the distributor to enable them to analyze the trend of power consumption/ generation and regulate their distribution accordingly.

Objective 4:

Real time/ near real time data collection from Mid Box and its trend analysis through developed web portal.

Data acquisition from each home in a community is transferred to the mid way box for trend analysis, enabling both mid box and distributors to efficiently monitor and regulate electricity according to the consumer needs.

Project Implementation Method

Task 1:

Selection and understanding of reverse meters.

Task 2:

Attachment and interfacing of Controller kit with Meter.

Task 3:

Hardware designing of Mid way box and implementation and development of open source software for smart grid.

Task 4:

Development of Website/ server based application and communicating it with mid way box.

Task 5:

Simulation of trend analysis using open source software.

Task 6:

Proof of concept by implementing the hardware.

Task 7:

Report Writing.

Benefits of the Project

This project will be benefiting the following:

Direct Beneficiaries

End User / consumer
Electric Generation / Distribution Companies
National Grids

Indirect Beneficiaries

Government / People of Pakistan

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The concluding deliverables of the purposed idea is a prototype system modeling the smart version of the present Electric Distribution infrastructure.

The technical detail of the system is as followed;

Multiple dummy variable loads modeling the consumers’ sites drawing power from an individual power outlet. The concept of net metering is being implemented by connecting a PV panel along with a grid tie inverter feeding the power through a socket as to model a distributed generation connected to the grid at one of the consumer site.

In order to keep a track of two-way flow of Power for the purpose of statistical analysis and bill calculation purpose smart meters are connected in such a way that they are successfully monitoring the net flow of power (power consumed from the utility grid – power generated) at each of the modeled consumer site.

Each of the smart meter is being communicated via mod bus protocol with the central server hosted on a raspberry pi device practically placed at the utility operator site modeled as a utility Control Center Where the utility representative is able to monitor the system health and regulate the power flow in the system at real time through a SCADA firmware. And simultaneously the Power system data from the individual meters stored in a time series data base as to allow statistical analysis in near real time.

The data extracted comprising of trend of consumption generation other information line billing and incentives against power generation and billing details are sheared to respective customers through a web site based web portal hosted by the utility at the control center. Allowing the customers to be updated daily allowing them other play an optimizing role to a stable grid.