Engineering Aspects of Implementation of Distribution State Estimator

Since the end of the last century, especially with the appearance of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), electric vehicles (EVs), and the comprehensive transformation of the entire energy sector, interest and investments in DPU have been growing intensively (In Europe, investments in distribution power grids are expected to exceed 400 billion euros by 2030 [Monitor Delloite – Eurelectric: Connecting the dots: Distribution grid investment to power the energy transition; Final Deliverable; January 2021. https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/energy-and-resources/articles/distribution-grid-investment-to-power-energy-transition.html ]. It is planned that as much as 40% of the investment will be set aside for modernisation, digitisation, and the introduction of smart meters). As a result, DPUs are under pressure to modernise the network faster and more efficiently while providing better services to consumers. They are required to significantly increase the reliability and resilience, operational and energy efficiency, and flexibility of the entire DPG, considering the impacts of DERs and EVs, extreme weather events, microgrid resilience, increasing customer control over their energy, the clean energy transition, frequent regulatory and policy changes, and customer programmes. All aim to mitigate power outages, comprehensively digitise resources and operations, minimise the ecological footprint, and maximise network adaptability. All this leads to new institutions, sustainability, and flexibility becoming key drivers in DPUs. For their establishment, radical transformations of the entire DPU are necessary. In such circumstances, stand-alone applications, regardless of their quality models and procedures for solving them, cannot respond to the increasingly complex challenges and expectations set by Distribution Power Utilities (DPUs), aggregators, consumers, new participants in the electricity market, new regulations, and fine and harsh weather and economic conditions. Depending on the final goals and capabilities of the client, it is necessary for real-time to integrate these models and procedures and exchange information with all internal and external IT/OT systems implemented in the considered DPU. Only such a tightly integrated system can cope with the ever-increasing changes in the entire energy sector. These changes include the modernisation of the network, changes to the current and definition of new processes, changes in regulations, and the application of the most modern IT/OT systems, with all Digital Grid components: Cybersecurity, Grid Operation management (DMS, OMS, SCADA, EMS, GMS, DERMS, etc.), Edge management (Smart metering, Demand side management, etc.), Asset management (GIS, APM, Mobil Workforce management, Grid Planning, etc.), and Analytics. These changes require support in data models for newly added element types, various transformations from model to model, and data exchange between different systems and different applications—while respecting recommendations for safe and secure communication. Significant investments are needed to design and practically implement such a system and the services of consultants, managers, and experts from various fields. Together, they adjust the general theoretical solution in accordance with the requirements and possibilities of the specific DPU. That is, together with experts from DPU, they design and implement a practically feasible solution. It should be emphasised that a completely identical solution cannot be applied to two DPUs. Bearing in mind that the results of state estimation are the basis for almost all functions and functionalities of Grid Operation management, it is clear that both the DSE model and the procedure for solving it must be firmly integrated into the Digital Grid system, and at the same time be adapted to the requirements and capabilities of DPU.