State Estimation in LV European-Type Distribution Grids Using Smart Meters and Advance Supervisors

The need to manage flexibility in real-time makes it increasingly necessary to deploy sensors and develop tools to ensure visibility of what is happening on the grid. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that most of the flexible loads and generators will be installed in the distribution network and that, in the European case, this network is very extensive and complex. State estimation is a crucial tool to achieve grid visibility, but the estimation techniques used in transmission systems are not directly applicable to this type of system. This paper introduces a simple but effective state estimation formulation for European-type low-voltage distribution systems, especially designed for 4-wire unbalanced networks. The objective function, which combines the system states and the measurements available on the system, is constructed by a simple procedure using simplified formulations and equations. The measurements used include bus voltage magnitude, power and current injection, and power flows. To validate and verify the performance of the introduced estimator, an extensive set of tests has been performed on a part of a real European network simulated using OpenDSS and the results demonstrate the estimation accuracy and performance of the proposed estimator.