2021 3rd International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and Power Systems (ICHVEPS)
Development of Meter Data Management System
Based-on Event-Driven Streaming Architecture for
IoT-based AMI Implementation
2021 3rd International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and Power Systems (ICHVEPS) | 978-1-6654-4354-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICHVEPS53178.2021.9601104
Ignatius Rendroyoko Antonius Darma Setiawan
School of Electrical Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering
Informatics Jakarta Global University
Institute Technology of Bandung Jakarta, Indonesia
Bandung, Indonesia antonius@jgu.ac.id
rendroyoko@students.itb.ac.id
Abstract—Building an accurate, precise, fast, and extensive
capacity metering system is mandatory for electricity utility
companies. Therefore, several years ago, utilities have built
automated meter reading (AMR) systems to run energy
measurement business processes to help companies earn
revenue. With the growing demand for utilities for detailed and
real-time energy measurements at customers, utility companies
need to migrate technology from AMR to Advance Metering
Infrastructure (AMI). This effort will require the development
of information technology and supporting equipment. One of
them is the Meter Data Management System (MDMS). It is an
essential part of the AMI system to handle the utility company's
business processes and the Service Level Agreement (SLA). This
paper discusses developing an MDMS for an electricity
company's AMI energy measurement system using an IoT-
based approach. It leads to a massive meter reading in a certain
interval period and handling such conditions required
implementing the event-based streaming architecture. The
Head-End System (HES) uses the enhanced AMR-based one.
The measurement results of the proposed MDMS-HES for AMI
show the reading process can handle massive meter reading
precisely and detect any abnormal measurement quantities. The
reading interval only takes 37.5% of the SLA required by the
utility company to read 100% of the meter population. This
advanced capability can guarantee better measurement results
and guarantee the certainty of the company's revenue.
Keywords—AMI, MDMS, IoT, Streaming platform
I. INTRODUCTION
The recent technological advancement leads to evolution
in any industry. This evolution is known as industry 4.0, when
feedback information becomes the main factor to the cyber-
physical system. This kind of evolution brings over to the
electrical utility industry as well. One technology that
characterizes the evolution taking place is advanced metering
infrastructure (AMI).
According to Gartner, Advanced metering infrastructure
(AMI) is a composite technology composed of consumption
meters, a two-way communications channel, and a data
repository (meter data management - MDMS). These
components support all phases of the meter data life cycle,
from data acquisition to final energy consumption information
to end customers (e.g., load profile) or back-end systems (e.g.,
revenue protection, demand response, or outage
management).
AMI applies a communications system and smart meters
capable of remotely providing each customer's electricity use
detail to the utility at 15 minute or hourly intervals. So, it will
978-1-6654-4354-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
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Suhardi
School of Electrical Engineering and
Informatics
Institute Technology of Bandung
Bandung, Indonesia
mr.suhardi@gmail.com
drive more data and information to improve the power
system's quality and give customers more control over their
energy use. In addition, it can dramatically reduce utility
operating costs, including meter reading, customer services,
field services, collections, theft management, and other
functions. One of the features of smart-meter in AMI is
allowing the utility to connect and disconnect customers
without going to the premise.
PT. PLN (Persero) is a state-owned utility company in
Indonesia, which has more than 80 million customers spread
throughout Indonesia. Recently, the utility has implemented
automated meter reading (AMR) measurement system for
over 300 thousand enterprise customers. Starting from 2021,
PLN plans to have roll-out AMI implementation. In 2021,
PLN begins with the pre-commercialization phase with 150
thousand customers. Implementing such a massive metering
system will need adequate telecommunication and IT
infrastructure. PT. Indonesia Comnets Plus (ICON+), as an
ICT company and the subsidiary of PLN, will provide it.
Previously, the AMR system consists of the head-end
system (HES) to collect the required data from meters and
meter data repository. Handling the evolution of meter reading
from AMR to AMI requires PLN and ICON+ to improve and
re-engineer the AMR system capabilities to support AMI
implementation. The center of the AMI system is MDMS as
the single source of truth of meter data to be used by other
methods like billing, customer information system (CIS), and
distribution information system (DIS). The problem is how to
develop such a reliable system to handle a massive amount of
smart meters. Also, what kind of architecture is suitable to
handle it.
This paper will discuss an MDMS architecture, including
a proposed methodology on reading a vast volume of smart
meters at 15 minutes of interval simultaneously. IoT and data
stream processing becomes the fundamental approach to
determine the architecture.
II. METER READING METHODOLOGY
The current AMR system consists of three main modules:
data collector, meter data repository, and data analysis and
evaluation. The data collector handles the meter data reading
based on DLMS/COSEM standard. Thus, the meter is the
DLMS server, and the data collector is the client.
There are two types of methodology in acquiring the meter
data: pool and push. The pool methodology in the current one
403
 and the push methodology is the IoT approach that we
propose.
PLN has already studied what kind of telecommunication
works with the following AMI implementation in Indonesia.
Cellular is the current primary telecommunication mode,
where the others are PLC and RF mode. However, PLN has
not decided on the specific PLC and RF technology
specifications yet. So, the paper will focus on the cellular
telecommunication mode.
A. Pool Methodology
The pool methodology, as mentioned before, is the
primary method to get the meter data. The head-end system
(HES) will be the client application, and the smart meter
becomes the server application in the DLMS protocol
terminology. HES ask the smart meter for specific data, end-
of billing (EoB), instant, or load profile (LP). EoB and LP are
scheduled data, and instant is unscheduled one.
The sequences on the meter reading are as follows. First,
the HES sends a command to ask for specific data using a
message queueing system through a telecommunication
channel, and the meter answers it by sending the data on the
standard protocol, in this case, the DLMS protocol. However,
the existing meters are not following the specific protocol
standard. Instead, some meters use DLMS protocol with
varying implementation, and some implement proprietary
protocol.
Fig. 1 Pool method using cellular: HES pools the data from the
meter
The following process is the received encoded meter data
need to be encoded by the data collector. Because there are
various meter data protocols, the decoded process needs a data
protocol library for each type of meter. The decoded data is
then run to a verification process to ensure the data is valid.
After the data collector has clean data, then it stores the data
to be further processed. The centralized reading and decoding
sequence affects the computing power in the server. In
addition, it may lead to the infrastructure sizing problem when
dealing with a vast number of meters.
The problem with this methodology is the
telecommunication network quality and capacity. Because the
reading process utilizes the telecommunication network
channel, then the whole process depends on it. As mentioned
before, the primary and proven telecommunication mode is
cellular, but it is the best-effort network. Therefore, when the
network fails, the whole reading process will also fail, as
shown in Fig. 1.
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The next problem is the network capacity when dealing
with a vast number of meters on AMI implementation. It is
dealing with capacity limitation known as Shannon capacity.
The Shannon capacity of a telecommunication channel is the
maximum error-free data rate that can be transferred over the
channel for a particular noise level theoretically and can be
expressed as follow.
= log 1+ (1)
where
C : channel capacity
B : channel bandwidth
S/N : signal to noise ratio (SNR)
The Shannon limit dictates a maximum capacity for the
channel that depends on the bandwidth and SNR. It also
means there is a maximum number of meters for reading
simultaneously, affecting data acquisition time. Therefore, an
appropriate way to deal with communication capacity is
necessary as the volume and meter reading frequency
increase.
B. Push-based IoT Methodology
The proposed solution to these issues is to have an edge-
computing next to the meters. By having an edge-computing
device near the meter premise, we can move the data collector
function into it. Therefore, we have developed a smart cellular
modem as an edge-computing device. By having a smart
modem instead of the standard modem, we can resolve the
problem of having such best-effort telecommunication embed
in the reading process. It is because the serial cable has
become the telecommunication channel.
From Fig. 2, the request comes from the smart modem, and
the response goes from the meter to the smart modem. Then,
the smart modem decodes the meter data, which refers to the
data protocol of the meter. The next step is encoding the data
to the JSON format and send it to the HES using IoT protocol.
Before the smart modem sends the data to the HES, it first
checks the quality of the telecommunication channel. If the
quality is sufficient to transmit the data, then the smart modem
will send the data. Otherwise, it will store it temporarily until
the quality is back to normal.
Fig. 2 Push method using cellular: HES receive data from smart
modem
The capacity becomes crucial when the number of meters
and the frequency of reading increase significantly.
Scheduling the reading for each meter or a group of meters
can reduce the capacity needed. The orchestration of smart
 Fig. 3 MDMS Stack inside AMI architecture
modems to arrange the schedule for each meter within
milliseconds difference will significantly reduce the problem.
Dealing with capacity and the computing power on the HES
side.
III. METER DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (MDMS)
The previous discussion has proposed the solution on the
meter data collecting function of AMI implementation. The
next part is how to store valid meter data and analyze the data
for the user or other systems. At this point, we will need meter
data management system.
We can define a meter data management system (MDMS)
as a suite of software to collects and stores the vast quantities
of data delivered by smart metering systems (HES) and
processes them into information used by the user or other
utility applications, including billing, customer information
systems, and outage management systems.
A. Event-Driven Streaming Platform
When the system has to handle a vast number of data flow
from HES to MDMS and vice versa, we need a reliable
system. In the previous design, we used batch processing.
Batch processing refers to processing a high volume of data in
a batch within a specific period. Thus, batch processing
processes a large quantity of data all at once. So, it takes a
longer time to process. The data is analyzed on a snapshot in
batch processing, and the response is provided after job
completion. Therefore, it utilizes considerable computing
power. In the advanced meter reading (AMR), the batch
processing approach fits with the requirement to produce
billing.
However, the batch processing approach does not meet the
nature of AMI implementation. The data frequently flows in-
stream data, whether meter data, event, log, alarm, or another
system status like an outage. The data creates based on the
event that happens on the meter premise.
Stream processing analyzes streaming data in real-time,
and it processes the data in few passes. So, it takes only a few
seconds or milliseconds. Also, the data is analyzed
continuously, and it causes the response to be fast. Therefore,
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it is better to give a streaming processing approach to the AMI
implementation.
Based on how the batch and streaming processing works,
we determine that the AMI system and MDMS development
use streaming platforms, specifically event-driven streaming
platforms. It is because the event drives all the stream data
generation. The implementation of this platform is Apache
Kafka. Apache Kafka is a reliable message broker that helps
transmit messages from one system to another in real-time and
batch data processing.
B. MDMS and AMI Architecture
Fig. 3. depicts the PLN standard for AMI implementation,
and MDMS is the center component. The data flow of AMI
begins from the smart meter. As mentioned before, there are
three primary telecommunication modes approved by PLN so
far: cellular, PLC, and radio frequency (RF). PLC and RF
technology need a data concentrator unit (DCU) to collect the
meter data from smart meters covered by it. The DCU is
equipped with a data collector function so that the DCU
becomes the client application. It means the DCU pool the
meter data from the smart meter using the DLMS protocol.
The meter and HES use a modem for the pooling method or a
smart modem for the push method in cellular technology.
The meter data then decode, which refers to the PLN's
meter protocol standard that organizes the OBIS code for each
parameter needed by the system. The data is then encoded
using the same standard into JSON format and sent to the data
collection module inside the HES through a fiber-optic or
broadband cellular network. After that, the data flows to the
MDMS through series of validation, evaluation, and
estimation (VEE) to ensure that the data is valid. The MDM
module then stores the validated one.
The stored data is a single source of truth data and can be
share and process throughout the system. In addition, we have
standardized the integration of MDMS and other systems such
as head-end system, analysis, and evaluation using batch and
real-time processing, billing, customer information system
(CIS), and distribution information system (DIS) into a
standard integration document. The integration utilizes the
streaming platform in two-way communication. The benefit
 of using the streaming platform in the integration is a reliable IV. EXPERIMENTS AND DISCUSSIONS
system, as mentioned before. If somehow system A sends data The experiment will follow each development stage. Right
to system B and for some reason system B is down, then the now, the completed stage is at phase two. It means there is
data will be retained inside the streaming platform. When already an independent HES, which consists of a data
system B is back to live, the data will flow to system B. collector and meter data library, and MDMS application. Both
Therefore, the whole systems maintain high availability or applications already use the streaming platform to
reliability. communicate with each other.
C. MDMS Modules The first experiment phase tests the streaming platform to
The MDMS consists of several primary modules: meter enhance meter reading performance, especially load profile
data management, asset management, roll-out management, (LP) data. The experiment involving 1191 meters and the
operation and maintenance management, and control and reading of 7 days backdate LP data (D-7). Meter generates LP
configuration. The details of each function of the meter data data at 15 minutes intervals (follows PLN Standard).
management system are described in TABLE I. Therefore, each meter produces 96 LP data per day. In
addition, the first experiment has already been done and only
TABLE I. MDMS MODULES AND DETAIL FUNCTIONS used the available infrastructure.
Module Functions TABLE II EXPERIMENT RESULT
- Scheduled data collection
- On-demand reading Total Meter 1.191
Meter data
- Event gathering Number of LP data D-7 (records) 800.352
management
- Validating, estimating, and Number of LP data read D-7 (records) 163.577
editing (VEE)
- Customer site information Window time (hours) 4.5
Asset management - Device linked sites The experiment could not be completed because of the
- Device inventory infrastructure availability issues. Therefore, the success of
- Work order deployment meter reading cannot be completed perfectly near 100%, as
lifecycle shown in TABLE II. Data storage capacity may be fulfilled
Roll-out - Performance level, installation before the "reading process" is completed. Because of it, we
management status will analyze the result using the extrapolation method. Finally,
- Service level agreement (SLA) the goal is to examine whether the enhanced system can fulfill
status the reading SLA from PLN, 95% success reading within eight
- Remote operation hours window time.
Control and
- Device configuration The extrapolation calculation to determine the
configuration
- firmware upgrade performance of the system is as follows.
Operation and - Configure interval readings
163.577
maintenance - Outages and power quality = × 100% = 20.44%
management - Event analysis 800.352
Geographical - Device location The success rate is 20,44% within 4.5 hours. It means that
Information System - Low voltage topology within the available time according to PLN success level
agreement (SLA): 8 hours x 7 days = 56 hours, the enhanced
All modules and functions are programmed using system can read 20.44% within 4.5 hours. So, assume that the
microservice architecture orchestration, and the streaming success rate in each day is the same; the enhanced system will
platform provides a reliable system. In addition, MSA makes need 39.38% of the required time (56 hours) to achieve a
agile development to handle changes when needed and 100% success rate. Thus, we can conclude that the second
anticipate future business processes possible. development phase successfully enhances the performance of
HES.
The development will take several phases. The first
development is separating the storage and the ANNEV ACKNOWLEDGMENT
(analysis and evaluation) from the data collector from the
We thank PT. Indonesia Comnets Plus and PT. PLN
AMR system and the development of MDMS. Then, the data
(Persero) gives us access to the MDMS development,
collector becomes the HES. The second stage is to develop
discusses the solution, and tests the enhancement.
MDMS using the primary modules and functions as stated in
TABLE I. In addition, the MDMS will incorporate enhanced
storage and the ANNEV module from the previous system. In
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