Micro-generations and future grid usages, such as charging of electric cars, raises major challenges to monitor the electric load in low-voltage cables. Due to the highly interconnected nature, real-time measurements are problematic, both economically and technically. This entails an overload risk in electricity networks when cables must be disconnected for maintenance reasons or are accidentally damaged. Therefore, it is of great interest for electricity grid providers to anticipate the load in networks and quicker detect failures. However, computing the electric load in cables requires computational intensive power flow calculations and live consumption measurements. Today’s view of the grid is usually based on on-field documentation of cables, fuses, and measurements by technicians and therefore often outdated. Thus, the electric load is usually only simulated in case of major topology variations. However, live measurements of smart meters provide new opportunities. In this paper we present a novel approach for a near real-time electric load approximation by deriving in live the current electric topology and cable loads from smart meter data. We leverage the models@run.time paradigm to combine live measurements with topology characteristics of the grid. Our approach enables to approximate the load in cables, not only for the current grid topology, but also to simulate topology changes for maintenance purposes. We showed that this allows a near real-time approximation while remaining very accurate (average deviation of 1.89% compared to offline power-flow calculation tools). Developed with a grid operator, this approach will be integrated in a monitoring and warning system and as an embeddable solution for on-field simulation.
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