‘Micro-balances’ project: an enhanced system for measuring energy and monitoring power quality

As the Italian Trasmission System Operator (TSO), Terna has the legal mandate to measure the energy exchanged on the Significant High Voltage National Grid between consumer, producers and distribution systems. While these last entities are required to install and maintain the energy measurement equipment, physical and communication failures of these devices with the Terna metering system can lead to a loss of information about energy exchanges. To avoid this scenario and better reconstruct missing measures, Terna has initiated the “micro-balances” project, which consists in the installation of more than 2600 energy and power measurement devices at Terna’s electrical stations in order to measure the energy consumed inside an user defined portion of the electrical grid and/or by a whole market area. In this paper the theoretical framework of the project and real examples of the most interesting applications are illustrated in order to show the potential of the project itself.