Distribution System Voltage Monitoring and Control Using Smart Meters and Tap Changing Transformers

Maintaining power quality for consumer households has always been challenging for utilities. Low voltage at consumer households owing to large voltage drops in long feeder lines as well as in low tension side results in poor equipment performance and health. The distribution system monitoring and visualization plays a vital role for power quality improvement. This paper presents an algorithm that combines open-source software OpenDSS with python to obtaining the data from smart meters, analyze and visualize them with geographical interface. With optimum number of smart meters installed in various nodes in low tension side and the voltage quality at consumer households can be monitored in real time and Visualized in open street map. A server platform, is used to store, manage and process data from the smart meters at the interval of 5 minutes, with Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. The system was tested in real load center. The average error between the visualized data and monitored data is found to be 2.47%. On load tap changer transformers were used to improve the voltage quality at consumer premises. the algorithm to optimize the operation of tap changing transformers was developed after the data from the smart meters were analyzed. With the addition of tap change transformer, the average voltage regulation over a period of 24 hours was reduced from −15.49% to −0.03%.