On possibilities of using smart meters for emergency grid management — Analysing the effect on power quality

Electricity grids worldwide are continuing to be severely constrained and stretched to capacity. Certain grid conditions e.g., peak load crisis or loss of generation may lead to severe under frequency situations. Load shedding can then be useful to prevent the national grid from being overwhelmed. Typically, load shedding is done from medium voltage substation level and all customers including emergency service providers under that substation lose power. However, it is beneficial for a society to exclude emergency service providers from load shedding. Smart Meters (SMs) are generally equipped with remotely accessible switch which gives a unique opportunity to exclude prioritized customers during emergency load shedding. Distribution System Operators (DSOs) are currently using remote SM switching typically for one customer at a time. However, the SM switching technique has not been fully investigated with regard to multiple customers. In order to fulfill the gap, this paper presents results obtained from field tests on simultaneous multiple SMs switching with a main focus on the impact of multiple SMs switching on Power Quality (PQ). The results show that impact on PQ might be negligible for small number of SMs switching. Moreover, faster SMs switching and reliable communication system is found as an important prerequisite to use SMs for emergency load shedding.