3.4.3 Opportunities for further work

3.4.3 Opportunities for further work

The review and assessment carried out within this report indicate that there are many opportunities for future work to develop new models for improving network visibility. Based on the identified barriers and challenges in this report, some of the directions for future works can be regarded as follows:

• Network modelling: As many use cases rely on network models, new methods should be developed to extract accurate network models with minimum data requirements. An interesting avenue for future work is to identify the minimum required information of network models for different use cases.

• Smart meters: While it is acknowledged that smart meters are a key enabler in improving network visibility, their integration in the power systems is delayed due to several barriers. Future works need to be done to investigate what is the minimum number of meters, their location on the circuit, the type and granularity of data for different use cases?

• Emerging technologies: As stated above, several products have been developed in recent years that can be employed to enhance network visibility. These products collect different data and use different formats to store data. This can create interface challenges when data is provided by multiple third parties in different formats and qualities. A direction for future works is to develop technical standards that are required to ensure that data is provided in a consistent and useable format. The value of having additional device-level metering should be evaluated against using additional channels utilised in the smart meters.