Advanced Metering and Data Access Infrastructures in Smart Grid Environments

For securing the provision with electric energy in smart grids, the ascertainment of energy consumption and production is inevitable in order to be able to apply appropriate control algorithms. As energy management is a highly distributed task, a data network has to exist in parallel to the power network for gathering the required data and applying control strategies by using distributed actuators, e.g., for demand response applications. For the sensing part, the introduction of Advanced Metering Infrastructures is a step ahead to the targeted meter data acquisition. Yet the definition and deployment of intelligent, but nevertheless privacy preserving, distributed control algorithms demands the collection of data from distinct sources and the application of further services like aggregation, anonymization, etc. Thus, future metering infrastructures have to provide more functionalities than those of a simple sensor network. In this paper, we discuss methods to provide such an added value infrastructure.