Using Smart Meters in State Estimation of
Distribution Networks
A. Alimardani, Student Member, IEEE,
S. Zadkhast , Student Member, IEEE,
J. Jatskevich, Senior Member, IEEE,
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Abstract— The quality of state estimation (SE) in distribution
networks has suffered from lack of adequate measurements.
Recently, a number of electrical companies have started to
install smart meters throughout their distribution networks,
which creates an opportunity to achieve high quality SE in
distribution networks. However, the signals provided by smart
meters are not synchronized, and the time gap between two
consecutive measurements of smart meters is considerable,
which implies that a snapshot of the entire network is not
available. To address this issue, this paper employs an idea that
is based on the credibility of each measurement signal. In the
proposed methodology, the variance of error of each measured
signal is modified to compensate for the non-synchronicity of
smart meters. The effectiveness of the proposed method is
demonstrated using IEEE13-bus system. The results show that
the introduced method is more reliable than traditional SE
techniques and improves the accuracy.
Index Terms-- Distribution network, non-synchronized
sampling, smart grid, smart meters, state estimation.
I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
Distribution networks are an integral part of the
developments pursued in Smart Grids. State estimation is the
heart of most of these advanced application in Distribution
Management Systems (DSMs), which provides the necessary
information for various applications including real-time
control and monitoring, optimizing the use of distribution
transformers, volt/VAr control, feeder reconfiguration and
restoration, control of switches and reclosers, demand side
management, capacitor switching, etc. [1-6]. Introducing
distributed generation and renewable energy systems can
cause overvoltage, which signifies the importance of
Distribution System State Estimation (DSSE). Until recently,
very few measurement devices have been installed to monitor
the condition of medium and low voltage feeders in
distribution networks, and therefore, performing a reliable
and accurate SE was not possible [2]. This problem is
referred to as observability of networks [7]. Some electrical
companies use historical data and pseudo measurements to
perform the SE in distribution network [6]. However, due to
poor accuracy and low confidence of pseudo measurements,
the resulting state estimation was not accurate and reliable.
This research was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering
Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, under the Strategic Project Grant on
Enabling Solutions for the Future Canadian Smart Grid.
978-1-4799-6415-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
E. Vaahedi, Fellow, IEEE,
Operation Technologies
BC Hydro
Vancouver, BC, Canada
ebrahim.vaahedi@bchydro.com
In the recent years, the number of installed measurement
devices have increased significantly [8]. The smart meters
have been installed in different regions such as British
Columbia, Canada. BC Hydro is installing more than a
million smart meters for consumers in the province providing
a great number of accurate and reliable measurements [9].
Another recent modification in distribution networks is
introduction of meshed topologies which impacts some of the
methods used in DSSE [10]. For instance, some companies
used techniques based on the premise that the network is
radial. Therefore, it was possible to trace the power flow from
loads to the feeder and estimate the voltages merely based on
pseudo measurements at the user end side. However, as non-
radial distribution networks are being designed, new SE
techniques should be developed which is capable of dealing
with the problem of having distribution networks with highly
meshes topologies.
The problem with smart meters is that the meters do not
provide synchronized measurements, and as a result, a
snapshot of the entire network is not provided. Moreover,
sometimes, these meters are designed to send data with some
delay e.g. at the end of the day. In recent structures such as
the one which BC Hydro is implementing, each measured
signal is transmitted with no significant delay. However,
synchronizing a great number of devices is too costly and not
in most of companies’ prospect. Therefore, available smart
meter measurements are not synchronized.
At this point, few studies can be found with regard to
DSSE based on smart meters in the literature. In [11], SE is
performed using real-time measurements. However, smart
meters do not provide real-time signals. Therefore, the results
are unrealistic. Some studies [12] show that smart meters can
improve the accuracy of SE. However, these studies assume
that similar to transmission networks and measurements of
smart meters are reasonably synchronized [12]. However,
treating the signals as if they are all synchronized could
decline the quality of SE since the time difference between
measurements could be considerable. In [5], it is assumed that
the measurements are synchronized and they are transmitted
every 12 hours. The problem is that a long delay in
transmitting the signals can lead to significant estimation
error. Moreover, as mentioned, new infrastructures do not
have this delay. Reference [11] attempts to employ advanced
metering infrastructure (AMI), i.e. smart meters and feeder noise in sampling electric variables. The p.d.f of a
measurements, to solve the problem. It does not take into measurement as a Gaussian random variable is defined as
account that the measurements are not synchronized. 1 ⎛⎜ z − μ ⎞⎟
2
Reference [13] tries to use smart meters’ measurements to − ⎜ ⎟
1 2 ⎜⎝ σ ⎟⎠
train a neural network in order to forecast the load. However, f ( z) = e (2)
the process of incorporating the non-synchronized data in the 2π σ
machine learning process is not addressed. Furthermore, [15] where σ is the standard deviation and μ is the mean. This
adds a block to the prevailed state estimators which is the function is also referred to as the likelihood function [7]. For
machine learning functions. a system, the joint probability density function, (which
This study tackles the problem of non-synchronicity of represents the probability function of m independent
smart meters’ measurements. The proposed method takes all measurements with Gaussian p.d.f, can be expressed as the
the smart meter measurements into account as non- product of individual p.d.fs (assuming that each measurement
synchronized samples and filters them to achieve an accurate is independent of the rest) as [7]
SE. The introduced technique is based on the idea that the f (z ) = f ( z1 ) f ( z2 )... f ( zm ) , (3)
measurements become less reliable as time passes. To address
this point, a technique is developed to incorporate the where zi is the ith measurement and z T = [ z1 , z 2 ,..., z m ] .
reliability of each available measurement into the variance of For a given set of measurements and their corresponding
measuring error which is assigned to the measurement device. standard deviation, the likelihood function (joint p.d.f) will
The main properties of the proposed method in this paper are: attain its peak when the unknown mean values are chosen
• It takes the non-synchronicity of measurements into closest to their true values. Thus, the goal is to maximize the
account and improves the accuracy of the SE drastically likelihood function by assigning mean values, which are the
compared to the scenario where measurements are closest to measured values. To further formulate the problem,
treated as if they are synchronized. the explained process is represented as
• In order to have industrial merits, it is considered that the Max f (z ) ≡ Max log( f (z )) =
proposed algorithm should be compatible with the m
⎛ zi − μ i ⎞ m
2 m
. (4)
-1
existing implemented tools in electric companies
requiring minimum modification in the prevailed 2 ∑ ⎜
⎜ σ ⎟
i =1 ⎝ i
⎟ − log 2π −
⎠ 2 i =1
log σ i ∑
methods. The log function is used to simplify the equations. Since the
• The proposed method does not rely on any specific last two terms in (4) are constant, maximizing f (z ) is
future of distribution network including the radial equivalent to
characteristic of them. Thus, it will be effective on m 2
⎛ zi − μ i ⎞
meshed networks as well as radial ones as the modern
smart distribution networks would be.
Min ∑
i =1
⎜
⎜ σ ⎟ .
⎝ i
⎟
⎠
(5)

• It is explained as to how smart meters will address the The mean value for a measured electric variable is a function
problem of observability of distribution networks. of state variables. Similar to (1), is can be said that
II. WEIGHTED LEAST SQUARE APPROACH μi = hi ( x1 , x2 ,..., xn ) = hi (x) . (6)
Different SE techniques have been developed and used in Accordingly, the objective function of the optimization is
the transmission and distribution systems. The most rewritten as
established approach is the weighted least square (WLS) m
⎛ zi − μ i ⎞
2 m
( zi − hi (x)) 2
method [7, 14]. The mathematical formulation of WLS state J ( x) = ∑ ⎜
⎜ σ
i =1 ⎝
⎟ =
⎟
⎠
∑ R ii
=
(7)
estimation is based on linearizing the relationship between i i =1
the measurements and the state variables. A measurement in a T −1
[z − h(x)] R [z − h(x)]
power system could be considered as a random variable with
where R = diag{σ 1 , σ 2 ,..., σ m } . (8)
Gaussian Probability Density Function (p.d.f). The mean of
this variable is the actual value of the variable which is As an optimization problem, the first optimality condition
measured, and the standard deviation of the random variable must be satisfied at the minimum point of J (x) . Therefore,
represents the error of the measurement. The nonlinear ∂J (x)
relationship between the state vector and measured electric g ( x) = = −HT (x)R −1[z − h(x)] = 0 (9)
∂x
variables can be stated as
⎡ ∂h(x) ⎤
z = h( x) + v where H (x) = ⎢ ⎥.
⎣ ∂x ⎦
where z denotes the vector containing the measurements,
Generally, the vector z is the measurements at different
x represents state variables, and vector function h(x) relates
substations, buses, and branches including the voltages,
the measurements to the state variables, and v represents the active power injections, reactive power injections, and
transmitted active and reactive powers, and currents through a
power line. These measurements should ensure that there is a
unique solution for x . If there is enough measurement to
determine a unique x , the network is referred to as
observable.
In traditional distribution networks, the network is always
unobservable due to inadequate measurements. As
mentioned, inaccurate and unreliable pseudo measurements
are employed to perform SE. Therefore, the DSSE has always
been rather inaccurate and not very reliable. In the next
section, it is described how smart meters are used to address
the observability problem. Moreover, it is explained how they
are employed as non-synchronized measurements.
III. METHODOLOGY OF STATE ESTIMATION BASED ON
NON-SYNCHRONIZED SMART METERS
Explaining the proposed method to address the major
problem in implementing smart meters requires 3 stages. In
this section, first, it is explained where smart meters are
installed, what they measure, how accurate they are, and how
frequent they transmit their signal to the control center.
Afterwards, it is explained why the system is observable
using smart meters exclusively. Then, the proposed method to
address the non-synchronicity of signals is described and
formulated.
A. Smart Meters
In smart Grids, it is expected that house meters be
deployed abundantly [10]. In other words, eventually, every
single load in a network is equipped with smart meters as is
being done in B.C. by BC Hydro. At the main feeder bus, it is
assumed that the voltage is known. In some companies such
as BC Hydro, this voltage is available from SE process on
transmission level. The rate of sampling of smart meters is
different in various networks. In B.C., the ultimate goal is 15
minutes for each sampling.
B. Observability of the Network
In smart distribution networks, the active and reactive
powers of all the PQ buses are given by smart meters. In
addition, voltage magnitude and the angle are given for the
feeder, which acts similar to the slack bus in transmission
network. Hence, similar to transmission network, the system
should be observable. In other words, smart meters provide
two measured electric variables for each bus. Also, each bus
has two unknown variables which are the state variables.
Thus, the number of equations of measurement is equal to the
number of unknowns, and the system is solvable. It is worth
mentioning that in this case, the situation is even better due to
the fact that the magnitude of voltage for non-connector PQ
buses is given as well, providing a higher level of confidence
as for the observability of the network.
C. Proposed Methodology to Employ Non-Synchronized
Measurements of Smart Meters
In the control center, at any given time, available
measurements can be categorized into two groups. In this
paper, one group is referred to as ‘updated samples’ which
are the measurements which are received at the given time.
The other group, which are the majority of measurements, are
the measurements which are sampled at some time between
(0,15) minutes ago and have not been updated since. We refer
to them as Out of Date (OD) signals. An OD signal will be
updated when it is 15 minutes since it was last updated. The
amount of time during which a sample is not updated is called
‘time to last update’ (TTLU). In other words, if a smart meter
has sampled electric variables 6 minutes ago, it will repeat the
sampling process in 9 minutes, and the TTLU of it is 6
minutes at this point.
Referring to section II, the error of measurement is
represented by its variance. If one examines the objective
function of the SE, it could be realized that variances are
playing the role of weights in a way that the bigger your error
(the bigger the variance), the smaller the weight of a
measurement in the optimization. Since the distribution
network is dynamic and consumers are changing their
consumption constantly, an OD signal would have additional
error in it. This additional error is a product of alteration in
the original electric variable which is measured as time
progresses. In other words, if a smart meter has measured the
active power of a load 5 minutes ago, the error of sampled
signal consists of two errors. One is the noise which is
represented by variance of measurement error. The other is a
result of the change of consumption in load since 5 minutes
ago. If one could incorporate the latter error into variance and
increase it so as to adjust the weight accordingly, the effect of
that OD measurement would be less than a similar
measurement which is just updated. This idea of variance
adjustment is the key approach to consider the non-
synchronicity of measured signals by smart meters. To do so,
a modification in the variance of each measured signal is
proposed as following:
σ adj = σ + (k × TTLU ) 2 . (10)
This means that every time that SE process is being
performed, the value of the variance for each measurement
should be adjusted based on equation (10). This modification
results in adjusting the weights of OD signals in reverse
proportion of TTLU. This new formulation addresses the
non-synchronicity of smart meters in SE of distribution
networks. A flowchart is shown in Fig. 1 to summarize this
section. It could be more accurate to calculate the alteration
parameter for different hours of the day and then implement it
in equation (10).
IV. SIMULATION OF CASE STUDY
In this section, a simulation study is conducted in order to
show the effectiveness of the proposed method. The case
chosen for this section is IEEE 13 bus distribution
benchmark. This study is explained in the following
subsections. The ultimate goal is to generate three scenarios,
one of which is the proposed method, and compare them.
These 3 scenarios are described in subsection C in detail.
A. Measurements and Updating Points
As mentioned, each measurement samples electric
variables every 15 minutes. However, in the global time of
the simulation, it should be determined when the 15 minutes
period begins for each smart meter. To have an unbiased
simulation, a random number is assigned to each smart meter
from the [0,900] interval where the unit is seconds. At the
beginning of simulation, it is assumed that all measurements
are available. As of then, the signal of each smart meter is
updated when the simulation time is equal to the assigned
random time to it. Afterwards, it’ll take 15 minutes for the
smart meter to update its signal again. This procedure is
applied to all smart meters. As a result, a set of non-
synchronized measurements is created.
B. Load Update and Power Flow
State estimation of distribution network is run every 200
seconds in this study. In each performance, first, the loads are Fig. 1. SE process with non-synchronized measurements. The alteration
parameter could be assessed once at the beginning or reassessed before each
updated and increased (or decreased) in accordance to the SE process.
profile given in Fig. 2. Afterwards, power flow process is
performed. This power flow gains the new voltage 0.8
(magnitude and angles) of each bus. The magnitude of these Load (% of Nominal Value)
voltages in accompany with active and reactive powers will 0.7
build the measurements for the next stage. Moreover, the
resulted voltages of network are the state variables and will 0.6
be used to calculate the error of estimation later.
0.5
C. Forming the Measurements of Three Scenarios
This stage explains three scenarios of this study. For the 0.4
sake of comparison, three sets of measurements are prepared.
The first one is based on the assumption that all the smart
meters are sampling and transmitting every time SE is being 0 2 4 6 8
Time (s) x 10
4
performed. In other words, a real-time monitoring tool is Fig. 2. Load profile for 24 hours as a percentage of nominal value.
available. This is far from the reality and is only considered
for comparison and providing better insight. In the results system without any noise added to the measurements and the
section, this scenario is referred to as “Real-Time Data”. The results were identical to load flow results given by the
second set of measurements and the third one are similar with benchmark.
one key difference.
Before each SE, it is checked to see which smart meters D. Results
are updating their signals and which ones are not. If a smart The described procedures are repeated every 200 second
meter is not updating, the old signal is being used as explained until the day is over. To demonstrate the performance of the
before. Therefore, in terms of measured values, second and
proposed method, the error of estimation of for the 3
third data set are identical. The difference is in the variances
which are assigned to each measurement set. As for the described data sets is shown is Fig. 3. As one can see, in case
second set, the variance is according to the accuracy of a real-time monitoring mechanism is available, the estimation
devices. However, as for the third set, adjusted variances are has the best results. However, this is practically too costly
calculated for all the meters every time SE is performed. In and such a mechanism is not realistically available. As for the
other words, in the second scenario, measurements are treated real cases, when the proposed method with adjusted variances
as if they are synchronized. In the results section, this scenario is employed, the error of the estimation is declined compare
is referred to “synchronized assumption”. It is worth pointing to the scenario of synchronized assumption. The reason, as
out that the voltages and powers given by the power flow are mentioned, is that this method modifies the variance of
mixed with a random Gaussian error for each measurement as
measurements in a manner that the more erroneous ones
the noise of measurement. A three phase state estimator is
developed to conduct the SE process. To verify the code, the (whether the error is from measurement or being out of date),
state estimation is performed for IEEE 13 bus distribution test is less influential in the process of estimation and
measurements which are less likely to be erroneous are
 0.08

0.07 Proposed Method

assigned with higher weights. Real-Time Data
Synchronized Assumption
To further clarify this case study, the summation of error 0.06

Estimation of State Vector

of measurements in each of the 3 scenarios at each point of SE

Norm 2 of Error of State

is given in Fig. 5. As expected, the error of estimation is each 0.05
scenario is in harmony with the error of measurements. One
0.04
point which this figure shows is about the middle time of the
simulation. As Fig. 2 depicts, the alteration of load at the peak 0.03
region is less than the points before and after the peak. This
means that the load alteration is supposed to be less than the 0.02
regions before and after it. As Fig. 5 admits, the error of
measurements is reduced when the simulation reaches the 0.01
peak of load region and increases afterwards. This explains
0
why the error of SE is less in the middle part. Another point 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
that this figure shows is that the major part of the error is Time (seconds) x 10
4

because of load alteration, not the noise of measurements. 1.6

This is deduced by noticing the curve of first scenario when a Fig. 3. Error of SE for each of the three scenarions.
Synchronized Assumption
real-time mechanism is presumed and the only error is the 1.4 Proposed Method
noise and error of sampling. Final point of this figure is that Real-Time Data

the total error of measurements at each point in the second and

Measurements at each SE
1.2

Summation of Error of
third scenario is the same. This emphasizes that even though
both of these scenarios have the same error in the 1
measurements, the proposed method is filters them in a more
reasonable and effective way by introducing the concept 0.8
adjusted variances achieving a higher accuracy.
0.6

V. CONCLUSION
This paper addresses the problem of lack of synchronicity
between smart meters’ measurements, which improves the
observability and accuracy of state estimation in distribution
networks. In the proposed methodology, the variance of error
of smart meters is adjusted to counteract the error introduced
by large time gap between consecutive measurements. The
method presented can be used in non-radial meshed networks
as well as radial grids. Moreover, it can be incorporated in the
prevailed state estimators, which have been already
implemented by electrical companies in industry, without
significant modifications. The proposed method is compared
against traditional state estimators, wherein it is assumed that
the smart meters are synchronized. The results show that the
proposed methodology consistently is more accurate and
should be considered as an important tool in the SE of
distribution networks in Smart Grids.
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