Reliable Streaming and Synchronization of Smart Meter Data over Intermittent Data Connections

More and more smart meters are being rolled out in domestic and commercial buildings as well as industrial sites worldwide. They enable the timely and fine-grained monitoring of electrical energy generation and consumption. Besides storing measured data locally, most smart meters are equipped with communication interfaces to transfer collected readings to metering service providers. This not only allows for accurate billing, but also enables the extraction of additional information from collected data, particularly when they have been sampled at a high temporal resolution. The communication link used to exchange meter data can, however, be prone to disruptions and transmission errors. Consequently, while consumption data used for billing purposes might only be removed from a smart meter’s internal buffer when they have been reported correctly, intermediate readings can be irrevocably lost during communication link outages. Because such readings are often useful for analytics purposes, their loss should be avoided. We hence propose a hybrid data transmission scheme that combines the real-time reporting of consumption readings with a background synchronization process that ensures the lossless exchange of data. We evaluate our design in a practical setting and demonstrate its efficacy in recovering data after the metering device has been physically disconnected from the network.