Smart Meters for Smart Energy: A Review of Business Intelligence Applications

Smart Energy (SE) has emerged as a critical technology in tackling global challenges like climate change while addressing the rising energy demands driven by today's data-intensive industrial revolution. SE integrates information and communication technologies into energy systems, optimizing them to meet these challenges effectively. At the core of SE operations are smart meters, playing a fundamental role in ensuring efficient functionality. These devices collect data, which is then leveraged to derive Business Intelligence (BI) for operations across the entire spectrum, from the sensing infrastructure to the cloud, primarily utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) technology framework. With the increasing complexity of operations and the growing demand for optimization and enhanced functionality, the SE technology stack is evolving to integrate across all layers and domains. This integration has led to the stratification of computational load across IoT layers, intensifying the dependence on smart meter data for BI. Consequently, smart meters themselves have evolved to become more functional and complex. This paper's novelty lies in its comprehensive exploration of the integration of BI with smart meter data. It delves into various aspects, including the different layers of intelligent operations within SE systems, the current state of the art, and diverse implementations of smart meters and their applications across operational locations, ranging from consumers to fog computing. The paper concludes by identifying research gaps and future directions, offering insights into the evolving requirements for the next generation of SE systems and the necessary adaptations in smart metering infrastructure to support these roles. This work contributes to a better understanding of the evolving landscape of data and computation in the context of SE, facilitating more efficient and effective energy management solutions.