Correlation Based Method for Phase Identification in a Three Phase LV Distribution Network

Low voltage distribution networks feature a high degree of load unbalance and the addition of rooftop photovoltaic is driving further unbalances in the network. Single phase consumers are distributed across the phases but even if the consumer distribution was well balanced when the network was constructed changes will occur over time. Distribution transformer losses are increased by unbalanced loadings. The estimation of transformer losses is a necessary part of the routine upgrading and replacement of transformers and the identification of the phase connections of households allows a precise estimation of the phase loadings and total transformer loss. This paper presents a new technique and preliminary test results for a method of automatically identifying the phase of each customer by correlating voltage information from the utility's transformer system with voltage information from customer smart meters. The techniques are novel as they are purely based upon a time series of electrical voltage measurements taken at the household and at the distribution transformer. Experimental results using a combination of electrical power and current of the real smart meter datasets demonstrate the performance of our techniques

Phase Identification of Smart Meters by Clustering Voltage Measurements

peer reviewedWhen a smart meter, be it single-phase or threephase, is connected to a three-phase network, the phase(s) to which it is connected is (are) initially not known. This means that each of its measurements is not uniquely associated with a phase of the distribution network. This phase information is important because it can be used by Distribution System Operators to take actions in order to have a network that is more balanced. In this work, the correlation between the voltage measurements of the smart meters is used to identify the phases. To do so, the constrained k-means clustering method is first introduced as a reference, as it has been previously used for phase identification. A novel, automatic and effective method is then proposed to overcome the main drawback of the constrained k-means clustering, and improve the quality of the clustering. Indeed, it takes into account the underlying structure of the low-voltage distribution networks beneath the voltage measurements without a priori knowledge on the topology of the network. Both methods are analysed with real measurements from a distribution network in Belgium. The proposed algorithm shows superior performance in different settings, e.g. when the ratio of single-phase over three- phase meters in the network is high, when the period over which the voltages are averaged is longer than one minute, etc

Phase Identification with Incomplete Data

Phase identification is a process to determine which of the three phases a particular house is connected to. The state-of-the-art identification methods usually exploit smart metering data. However, the data sets are not always available and the major challenge is hence to identify phases with incomplete data set. This paper proposes a novel spectral and saliency analysis identification method to overcome this hurdle. Spectral analysis is first performed to extract the high-frequency features from the incomplete data. Saliency analysis is then adopted to extract salient features from the variations of high-frequency loads in the time domain. Correlation analysis between customer features and the phase features is used to determine customers' phase connectivity. The method is executed iteratively until all customers with smart meters have been allocated to a specific phase or no salient features can be found. It is validated against real data from over 6000 smart meters in Ireland and achieves an accuracy of over 93% with only 10% smart meter penetration ratio in a 100-household network.</p

Making Distribution State Estimation Practical: Challenges and Opportunities

In increasingly digitalized and metered distribution networks, state estimation is generally recognized as a key enabler of advanced network management functionalities. However, despite decades of research, the real-life adoption of state estimation in distribution systems remains sporadic. This systematization of knowledge paper discusses the cause for this while comparing industrial and academic experiences and reviewing well- and less-established research directions. We argue that to make distribution system state estimation more practical and applicable in the field, new perspectives are needed. In particular, research should move away from conventional approaches and embrace generalized problem specifications and more comprehensive workflows. These, in turn, require algorithm advancements and more general mathematical formulations. We discuss lines of work to enable the delivery of tangible research.Comment: 10 page

A Novel Power-Band based Data Segmentation Method for Enhancing Meter Phase and Transformer-Meter Pairing Identification

This paper presents a novel power-band-based data segmentation (PBDS) method to enhance the identification of meter phase and meter-transformer pairing. Meters that share the same transformer or are on the same phase typically exhibit strongly correlated voltage profiles. However, under high power consumption, there can be significant voltage drops along the line connecting a customer to the distribution transformer. These voltage drops significantly decrease the correlations among meters on the same phase or supplied by the same transformer, resulting in high misidentification rates. To address this issue, we propose using power bands to select highly correlated voltage segments for computing correlations, rather than relying solely on correlations computed from the entire voltage waveforms. The algorithm's performance is assessed by conducting tests using data gathered from 13 utility feeders. To ensure the credibility of the identification results, utility engineers conduct field verification for all 13 feeders. The verification results unequivocally demonstrate that the proposed algorithm surpasses existing methods in both accuracy and robustness.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2111.1050