Digital measurement technology for the smart grid in low-voltage systems

The increased infeed of renewable energies and the increase in electricity demand are changing the demands on the power grid. In order to keep pace with this development, it is important to modernise the network infrastructure and this includes the digitalisation of the networks.

Low-voltage measurement technology in particular is a challenge here. The FF-U 2.0 architecture requires support for modern communication protocols such as MQTT and EST. The devices available on the market often speak with outdated protocols from the automation world (e.g. Modbus), have insufficient management functionalities and lack integrated security functions (e.g. encrypted data transmission).

Monitoring the power quality with DEHNrecord SD is a building block for safe operation and avoiding failures. Its flexibility and compliance with all innovative, technical and safety-related standards allows it to be incorporated into Netze BW’s integrated system architecture for monitoring intelligent low-voltage systems. This measuring device can already meet the requirements of the Netze BW standard. It is therefore an important component in the transformation of the power grid into a smart grid.

The multifunctional DEHNrecord SD measuring and analysis device measures and analyses power quality with a measuring accuracy of class A as per EN 61000-4-30. Event messages in the event of limit value violations are sent on the basis of the EN 50160 standard, which covers voltage characteristics in the public grid.

Decentralised data processing on the device (edge computing) allows a large amount of measurement data to be collected and processed as quickly as possible.

Special attention was given to the security requirements of the communication path. In order to securely transport the telemetry data (measured values), the transport protocol is based on the MQTT 5 network protocol. Here, the DEHNrecord SD must run through a special authentication chain in order to be able to transmit the data according to the specified security standards.