Challenges for Smart Electricity Meters due to Dynamic Power Quality Conditions of the Grid: A Review

During the last few years, Smart Electricity Meters have been deployed in several countries all around the world, replacing the trustable Electromechanical meter and even other electronic meters. Since the early deployments, many concerns and complaints from customers which do not trust Smart Meters accuracy have appeared. As a result, researchers of different institutions have been testing electricity meters under distorted waveform conditions and proposing methods to calibrate such meters in a more representative real world operative conditions. Applicable accuracy standards and regulations indicate a maximum distortion factor of 3% of the sinusoidal waveform for voltage and current during the calibration, which is not representative of many modern dynamic power quality scenarios. New tests and recommendations have been issued by regulatory bodies, but they are still not mandatory for meters to be certified. With many changes upcoming in the near future for the electrical Smart Grid like the inclusion of renewables, increasing non-linear loads, electric charging vehicles and other emerging technologies, the power quality conditions of the grid is expected to be significantly affected. In this paper, a review of the current and upcoming challenges for the smart meters is presented.