Location Awareness : Are Your Assets Self-Aware of Their Location on the Grid?

Industry Insights

Where Am I? Improving Grid Efficiency with Location Awareness Technology

May 10, 2022

One of the greatest obstacles to the evolution of edge computing and decision making is the inability of smart meters and other electrical system equipment to know exactly where—and how—they are connected to the distribution grid. This lack of detailed information impacts all aspects of grid operations, from load control of distributed energy resources (DERs) and intelligent switching to phase balancing and system reliability.

Knowing the physical location of your grid assets is helpful but knowing where they are electrically—and how they are connected—in the overall system is critical to your grid performance. Having this information improves safety, operational efficiencies, restoration efforts and resiliency and provides you with more intelligence, opening the door to more possibilities. Utilities with >1 million customers often realize more than three-and-a-half times their ROI per year in added value from their smart meter investments when they can identify meter electrical connectivity. Studies with customers have led to saving potentials upwards of $6.00 per customer endpoint/year that are achieved from improved ADMS capabilities. Extending the serviceable life of infrastructure and reducing capital investments by efficiently managing primary and secondary distribution (in conjunction with improved planning) can increase savings by extending ADMS capabilities and realizing accurate distribution grid topologies. Enabling precise control of your electrical distribution system requires knowing how your meters are connected—and the real-time control of your grid requires knowing that information now.

The smart meters in Itron’s distributed intelligence (DI) platform are the exception. With DI using the meter as a sensor at the edge of the grid, you are provided with the vital information to enable situational awareness, the active control of DERs and a host of other capabilities. Only DI from Itron can give you that insight today!

Using our newly released Location Awareness application, smart meters can be continuously aware of where they are connected on the grid—and where they are relative to other grid assets. This awareness does not require a GPS component in the meter and it’s not dependent on the topology of the communications network. Our application is the only solution that utilizes high-resolution sampling waveform measurements at the meter via peer-to-peer communication. By analyzing each endpoint’s characteristics relative to other devices on the network, you can determine how endpoints are electrically connected to the grid and continually monitor grid topology—which means meters can distinguish which secondary transformer and phase to which they are connected. Location Awareness is a fundamental breakthrough in the Itron network and DI platform. It enables new frontiers of smart grid use cases and applications not achievable without timely and reliable connectivity and phase data.

The Value of Location Awareness

Self-discovery of meter-transformer, meter-phase and meter-feeder connectivity
Analysis is done at the edge, requiring significantly less data communications and back-office processing
Automated process to compare against GIS connectivity model and flag any differences on a continuous basis
Device self-awareness of electrical location greatly improves many outcomes such as outage and theft detection, and network connectivity
Leverages PLC connectivity to deliver accurate and rapid phase detection and transformer connectivity

Location Awareness significantly improves the surgical effectiveness of existing processes such as outage and theft detection, transformer load management and demand response, while also enabling entirely new applications like detecting potentially unsafe grid conditions such as high-impedance connections and downed conductors.

Location Awareness enables