Page 96 - From Smart Grid to Internet of Energy

Smart metering and smart monitoring systems Chapter 2 81

FIG. 2.8 General architecture of advanced metering infrastructure.

2.4 Advanced metering infrastructure

The AMI architecture is comprised by three main components that are smart
metering section, communication network, and data acquisition and manage-
ment section of utility network as shown in Fig. 2.8. The components of
AMI system are associated to install a unique platform for DA, outage manage-
ment, and customer services. The DA provides several contributions such as
fault detection and localization, protection, isolation, energy efficiency, asset
management and remote control. These benefits of DA rely on smart metering
capabilities of entire network. AMI has been improved regarding to AMR to
eliminate its disadvantages caused by one-way data transmission. The two-
way communication capability of AMI also provides DMS that is an instant
and online decision-making tool relying on data acquisition from utility grid
and generating control commands for distribution system automation, circuit
breakers, reclosers, voltage regulators and substation control. DMS requires
an efficient and reliable communication infrastructure to accomplish these
functions and widespread sensor networks for accurate data acquisition. The
deployment of smart sensors, smart meters and AMI systems meet the require-
ments of a sophisticated DMS system [2, 4, 5, 14]. We have introduced three
main components of an AMI system in previous section. The protocols, stan-
dards and security issues of AMI technologies are introduced in the following
subsections.

2.4.1 AMI protocols and standards
The protocols and standards are defined to establish a regulation base for any
system to enable interoperability of heterogenous hardware and software. The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) defines interoperability
term as “the ability of two or more components or systems to exchange infor-
mation and use the information exchanged.” Since AMI technology is based on
an ICT architecture of many devices provided by diverse of vendors, there have
been numerous standards defined by standard development organizations such
as IEEE, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), American National