Smart Meters and their Application for Load Forecasting

Due to technological innovation and more digitalization in this modern era, conventional electromechanical energy meters are being replaced with smart energy meters by power utilities all around the globe. A safe and efficient energy system requires permanent communication among consumers and generators. Ministry of Power is also encouraging the DISCOs to install such smart meters to all industrial and commercial consumers by June 2023. A country like Pakistan which is facing power deficit from last 02 decades can forecast its load demand with the help of data collected via smart meters. Bulk amount of data collected needs to be processed with advanced techniques for accurate load forecasting. Smart metering enables the use of data-driven algorithms for various power system operations and planning functions like load forecasting, future network expansion and up gradation plan. A study of short term load forecasting with the help of classical methods and machine learning method for load modeling of domestic consumers of an area has been done in this research work. The performance of methods has been compared using standards; mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean squared error (RMSE) and R
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rating. A SWOT analysis of smart metering prospective for Pakistan Power System has also been carried out in this work.