A platform for testing monitoring systems for the power distribution grid

In future distribution network the need for automatic control and supervision has to be assisted by a monitoring system with high quality performance in terms of accuracy, reporting rate and robustness. However the number of measurement devices vs number of nodes buses is still very low. The increment in the measurement capacity can be achieved through distributed measurements, deploying of more devices, using existing measurements currently employed for other purposes (e.g. only protection, or energy billing) and gathering other heterogeneous measurements. Therefore, a measurement aggregator with monitoring functions should be able to produce meaningful and accurate results with very sparse, heterogeneous measurements. This paper proposes an architecture for testing this type of monitoring systems for distribution grids. The primary requirements for the development of this platform are: flexibility of the inputs, in terms of type, quantity and quality of measurements, and typical requirements for monitoring in modern smart grids. The key feature of the proposed platform is the modular structure, which allows total flexibility in terms of type of measurements and monitoring functions.