Watt’s up at Home? Smart Meter Data Analytics from a Consumer-Centric Perspective

Benjamin Völker, Andreas Reinhardt, Anthony Faustine and Lucas Pereira
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Benjamin Völker: Chair of Computer Architecture, University of Freiburg, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Andreas Reinhardt: Department of Informatics, TU Clausthal, 38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany
Anthony Faustine: Center for Artificial Intelligence (CeADAR), University College of Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin 4, Ireland
Lucas Pereira: ITI, LARSyS, Técnico Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: The key advantage of smart meters over traditional metering devices is their ability to transfer consumption information to remote data processing systems. Besides enabling the automated collection of a customer’s electricity consumption for billing purposes, the data collected by these devices makes the realization of many novel use cases possible. However, the large majority of such services are tailored to improve the power grid’s operation as a whole. For example, forecasts of household energy consumption or photovoltaic production allow for improved power plant generation scheduling. Similarly, the detection of anomalous consumption patterns can indicate electricity theft and serve as a trigger for corresponding investigations. Even though customers can directly influence their electrical energy consumption, the range of use cases to the users’ benefit remains much smaller than those that benefit the grid in general. In this work, we thus review the range of services tailored to the needs of end-customers. By briefly discussing their technological foundations and their potential impact on future developments, we highlight the great potentials of utilizing smart meter data from a user-centric perspective. Several open research challenges in this domain, arising from the shortcomings of state-of-the-art data communication and processing methods, are furthermore given. We expect their investigation to lead to significant advancements in data processing services and ultimately raise the customer experience of operating smart meters.

Keywords: smart metering; smart power grids; power consumption data; energy data processing; user-centric applications of energy data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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